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PERSONAL REMINISCENCES, 



ANECDOTES, AND LETTERS 



GEN. ROBERT E. LEE. 



BY 



Kev. X WILLIAM JOKES, D.D., 

FOHMEELT CnAPLACJ AEMT NORTITEEN vrBGrXIA, AND OF WASHINGTON COLLEGE, VIBGINTA. 



[Published by authority of the Lee family, and of the Facnlty of Washington 
and Le 




NEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

649 AND 551 BROADWAY. 
1874. 



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TO 

THE BSLOVKD MEMOBT 

or 

MES. MARY CUSTIS LEE. 

BT WHOSE EIXD ESCOCBAGEMEST THIS WORK WAS rSDEEIAEES, ASB WHOSE 
TALUASI.E AID HAS EXSICHED ITS PAGES, 

THIS BOOK 

13 AyrECnOSAIELT DEDICATED 
BT 

THE AUTHOE. 



PRE FA E. 



The author does not propose to add another " Life of 
Lee " to the several that have been given to the public 

Mine is a humbler but scarcely less important work. 

It was my proud privilege to have known General Lee 
intimately. I saw him on that day in April, 1861, on which 
he came to offer his stainless sword to the land that gave 
him birth. I followed his standard from Harper's Ferry, in 
1861, to Appomattox Court-house, in 1865, coming into 
somewhat frequent contact with him, rejoicing with him at 
his long series of brilliant victories, and weeping with him 
when " compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and 
resources." 

It was my still higher privilege to have been intimately 
associated with him during the last five years of his career, 
to have been one of the regular chaplains of his college, to 
have visited him frequently at his office and in his home, 
and to have had him sometimes under my own humble roof ; 
to have mingled with him in the freest social intercourse, 
and to have been the daily^ witness of those beautiful traits 
of character which made him seem even grander in peace 
than in war. 

I was one of that band of loving hearts whose sad privi- 



vi PREFACE. 

lege it was to bear liim to the tomb, when two continents 
mourned liis death. And I have enjoyed some peculiar 
facilities for knowing the events of his life, and studying his 
private character. 

It has been for me, therefore, a "labor of love," and 
one which, I trust, will not seem presumptuous or prove 
wholly unacceptable to the public, to recall a few personal 
reminiscences, cull a few anecdotes, and give a few of his 
private letters, which may present a picture of Kobert E. 
Lee, the Man, as he lived and moved, and was loved, 
among us. 

A large part of this book was originally prepared for the 
" Lee memorial volume," which the Faculty of Washington 
and Lee University designed publishing, and which I had 
the honor of assisting in preparing ; and Mrs. Lee did me 
the kindness to read carefully, and very warmly approve, 
my manuscript. 

When the publication of that volume was abandoned, 
and I proposed, with the consent of the Faculty, to use the 
material in a book of my own, Mrs. Lee wrote me a kind 
letter in which she said : "... Whatever the Faculty de- 
cide upon will, I know, meet with my approbation, and to 
no one would I more confidently trust the completion of the 
work, in the way you propose, than to yourself." Mrs. Leo 
was very much interested in the proposed publication, and I 
feel that, in giving this volume to the public, I am but car- 
rying out her earnest wishes. 

I was especially indebted to. Mrs. Lee, and have been 
placed under high obligations to General G. W. Custis Lee, 
and General W. H. F. Lee, for the letters which form so 
interesting and valuable a part of this volume. My thanks. 



PREFACE. vii 

are also due to tlie Faculty of Washington and Lee Uni- 
versity, not only for kind encouragement, but for invaluable 
assistance in the preparation of the work. 

Every thing of doubtful authenticity has been excluded 
from these pages, and the reader will, therefore, miss a num- 
ber of popular anecdotes which he would expect to find. 

This first attempt at authorship is sent forth with a sin- 
cere desire that it may prove acceptable to the countless 
admirers of the great Confederate chieftain, that it may 
serve to give to all a higher appreciation of his noble char- 
acter, and that it may prove a blessing to the young men 
of the country (more especially to those who "wore the 
gray "), by inducing them to study, in order that they may 
imitate, his shining virtues. 

J. W. J. 

Richmond, Va., Augitst 1, 1874. 



I^ OTE. 



At the death of General Lee a memorial volume was 
amioimced, and this Committee was appointed to superin- 
tend the publication. Circumstances, for which neither the 
Committee nor the publishers were responsible, delayed and 
finally prevented the publication of that work. In the mean 
time, Rev. John William Jones had prepared this book to 
aid in the completion of Valentine's beautiful sepulchral 
monument to General Lee. Mr. Jones was a faithful chap- 
lain in the army of General Lee, and, subsequently, while 
minister of the Baptist Church in Lexington, enjoyed in an 
unusual degree his favor and regard. During this period, 
and while acting at times as chaplain of Washington Col- 
lege, Mr. Jones had special opportunities to observe the 
character of General Lee, for whom he entertained an en- 
thusiastic devotion. The Committee, knowing the peculiar 
qualifications which the author brings to this work, have 
afforded him the fullest access to the materials in their pos- 
session, and are happy now to commend to the public the 
completed volume as a valuable contribution toward a biog- 
raphy of Robert E. Lee. 

Sio-ned: COMMITTEE OF THE FACULTY 

OF WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY. 



O O ]Sr TE ]^ T s. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

The Soldier 1 

Tribute of General J. A. Early — Extracts from addresses by Generals 
John B. Gordon and Wade Hampton, and Colonel C. S. Venable — 
Extracts from Northern critics — Opinions of the English press — 
Extracts from Colonel Chesney, Colonel Lawler, Professor George 
Long, and Professor Worsley. 

CHAPTER II. 

The College President 80 

Sketch by Rev. Dr. Kirkpatrick, Professor of Moral Science in Wash- 
ington and Lee University — Paper of Professor Edward S. Joynes, 
of Washington and Lee University — Incidents. 

CHAPTER III. 

Duty, the Key-note of his Life , . 133 

Anecdotes given by General Magruder, and ex-President Davis — His 
leaving the United States Army — Extracts from his private letters 
illustrating his devotion to the Union — His refusal of the supreme 
command of the United States Army — Letters to General Scott and 
his sister — Reception in Richmond — Letters to Hon. Reverdy John- 
son containing his own account of the circumstances of his resigna- 
tion — His firmness after entering the Southern Army — Conversation 
with Bishop Wilmer — Incidents of the surrender given by Colonel 
C. S. Venable — Conversation with General Wade Hampton, and 
with the author — Incidents given by General Gordon — Extracts 
from papers found in his army satchel — Letter to General Pendle- 
ton — Incident related by Hon. H. W. Hilliard. 



xii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER lY. 

PAGE 

Modest HuMiLirr, Simplioitt, and Gentleness .... 147 
Simplicity of his dress — Lack of display at his headquarters — Inci- 
dents illustrating his modesty — Colonel Charles Marshall's incidents 
of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg — Incidents illustrating the warm 
friendship between Lee and Jackson — Letters — His conduct toward 
his other officers — The account of Lee at Gettysburg given by 
Colonel Freemantle, of the English Army — Orders to his troops 
issued at Hagerstown on his retreat from Gettysburg — Incidents — 
Extracts from paoers found in his army satchel — Incidents illus- 
trating his tenderness for birds and animals — Letters to parties 
desiring to write hia biography. 

CHAPTER V. 
His Spieit of Self-denial foe the Good of Othees . . . 167 

Incident related by Hon. A. H. Stephens — ^About to go into the ranks 
as a private soldier — Ex-President Davis's incident — Self-denial of 
his living — Never used tobacco or intoxicating liquors — Incidents — 
Letter to a College Temperance Society — Stonewall Jackson's tem- 
perance principles — Incident related by General Ewell — General 
Lee's " treat " — An English officer's account of his visit to General 
Lee's headquarters — Incidents illustrating his deep interest in his 
men — Letter to the City Council of Richmond declining the gift of a 
residence — Refusal of gifts at the close of the war — Specimens of his 
letters declining pecuniary assistance — His refusal to accept a large 
salary, or any gratuity from the College — His letters on the subject 
— His object in writing a history of his campaigns to vindicate 
others rather than himself — Circular Letter — His want of nepotism 
— Incidents illustrating his refusal to promote his sons — Dr. Moore's 
incident of his refusal to apply for a special exchange for his son 
when in prison. 

CHAPTER VI. 
His "Want of Bitteeness towaed the Noeth, but Devotion to 

THE InTEEESTS OF THE SoUTH 186 

Incidents — His General Orders in Pennsylvania, and the conduct of 
his troops — Incidents — Treatment of prisoners — His testimony be- 
fore the Congressional Reconstruction Committee — Private letter to 
Dr. Carter, of Philadelphia — The real facts in reference to the treat- 
ment of prisoners — Incidents illustrating his want of bitterness — 
Splendid conduct of Lee's veterans since the close of the war, and 



CONTENTS. xiii 

PAGE 

his influence in bringing it about — Letters to General Grant — His 
application to President Johnson for " amnesty " — Letters to 
Colonel R. L. Maury, ex-Governor John Letcher, Hon. A. M. Keiley, 
Count Joannes, Commodore Tatnall, Commodore Maury, General 
Beauregard, General Wilcox, Chauncey Burr, Esq., Hon. Reverdy 
Johnson, Mrs. Jefferson Davis, Rev. G. W. Leyburn, General Early, 
Captain James May, Judge Robert Ould, General D. H. Maury, 
General James Longstreet, Hon. J. S. Black, Hon. Thomas Law- 
rence Jones, Colonel Blanton Duncan, Hon. James M. Mason, and 
others — His refusal to attend meetings having any reference to 
the war. 

CHAPTER YII. 

Hi8 Social Chaeaotee 235 

Simplicity of his dress — *' Given to hospitality " — Uniform courtesy — 
Retentive memory of names and faces — Incidents — Letters to Fed- 
eral officers — Reply to spirit-rappers — Incidents illustrating his quiet 
humor — A number of his private letters, 

CHAPTER VIII. 

His FlEMNESS IN OAEEYING OUT HIS PuEPOSES .... 283 

Incidents — His devotion to the Southern cause, and firm adherence to 
its fortunes — The true story of Appomattox Court-House — General 
Lee's own account — Popular errors refuted — The correspondence — 
Lee's appearance — His farewell address — Touching scene — Two of 
General Lee's letters to President Davis. 



CHAPTER IX. 

His Love foe his Soldiees, and theib Enthusiastic Devotion 
TO him 315 

Incidents — "General Lee to the rear" — A soldier's short argument 
against atheism — Incidents and letters — The marked courtesy and 
respect with which he treated his old soldiers — Grief of the soldiers 
at his death — Resolutions by soldiers' meeting in Lexington — Ad- 
dresses in Baltimore by General Trimble, Colonel Marshall, and Rev. 
T. U. Dudley — Great soldiers' meeting in Richmond, and addresses 
by General J. A. Early, ex-President Davis, General John S. Pres- 
ton, General John B. Gordon, Colonel Charles Marshall, General 
Henry A. Wise, Colonel WUliam Preston Johnston, and Colonel 
Robert E. Withers. 



xiv CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER X. 

PAOB 

His Domestic Life 357 

His own sketch of the Lee family — His youth and early manhood — 
Stratford — Life in Alexandria — Letter to his old teacher — ^At West 
Point — His marriage — Arlington — Letters to his family — Incidents 
— Leaving Arlington — Life during the war — Letters from camp to 
his family — ^His home in Lexington — Letters. 

CHAPTER XI. 

His Love foe Children 409 

A number of pleasing incidents illustrating this. 

CHAPTER XII. 

His Christian Chaeaotee, illustrated by Incidents, Letters, 

AND Personal Reminiscences 415 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Sketch of nis Sickness, Death, and Funeeal Obsequies, bt 
Colonel William Preston Johnston — Author's Conclu- 
sion 446 

APPENDIX. 
Selections feom Eulogies on General Lee .... 461 
Address of Hon. J. P. Holoombe 485 



LIST OF E:N'GRAYI]^aS. 



STEEL. 

I.— LEE AS THE COLLEGE PEESIDENT . . . Frontispiece. 
From a photograph by Miley, taken a few months before his 
death. 

TO FACE PAGE 

II.— LEE AS A YOUNG OFFICER 134 

m.— STONEWALL JACKSON 155 

R^— LEE AS THE CONFEDERATE GENERAL . . . .283 
From a photograph by Davies, which was selected by Mrs. 
Lee herself for the " Memorial," and is pronounced, by all 
who knew him, the war-picture of Lee. 

v.— MRS. LEE AT ARLINGTON 356 

From a picture taken just after she left there, in 1861, and 
one that she herself selected for the " Memorial " volume. 

VL— MRS. LEE AT LEXINGTON 446 

From a fine photograph taken by Miley, in 1873, two months 
before her death. 



"V^OOHD. 

I.— FREDERICKSBURG . . . '. 54 

IL— WASHINGTON COLLEGE 80 

From a photograph by Miley. 

m.— LEE CHAPEL 109 

From a photograph by Miley. 



xvi LIST OF ENGRAVINGS. 

TO FACE PAGE 

IV.— PRESIDENT'S HOUSE AT LEXINGTON . . . - 128 

From a photograph by Miley. 

v.— CHANCELLORSVILLE 149 

VI.— LEE AT GETTYSBURG 161 

VII.— LEE AND JACKSON AT COLD HARBOR . . . .171 

VIII.— "LEE TO THE REAR" . . Zll 

IX.— " STRATFORD HOUSE" 360 

The birthplace of General Lee. 

X.— ARLINGTON 366 

XI.— LEE AT THE SOLDIERS' PRATER-MEETING . . .417 

Xn.— GENERAL LEE'S OFFICE (JUST AS HE LEFT IT) . . 452 

XIIL— VALENTINE'S SARCOPHAGUS 460 



REMINISCENCES OF GEN. ROBERT E. LEE. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE 80LDIEE, 



General Lee was in the highest, truest sense of the term, 
A soldier; and, while a detailed narrative of his military 
achievements is not proposed, our portraiture would be in- 
complete without a chapter on his character and career in his 
chosen profession. 

With ample materials at hand, I prefer that the picture 
should be drawn by abler pens than my own, and shall, 
therefore, freely cull from what has been said by some of the 
ablest military critics of this and other countries. 

And I am fortunate in being able to present the estimate 
of Lee's generalship given by Lieutenant-General J. A. 
Early, in his address before Washington and Lee University, 
January 19, 1872, on the occasion of the second anniversary 
celebration of General Lee's birthday. 

Omitting only a few of the opening and concluding para- 
graphs, I give in full this splendid tribute of an able soldier 
to the chieftain whom he followed so faithfully during the 
war, and whose memory and fame it seems his proudest am- 
bition to perpetuate : 

" The commencement of hostilities in Charleston harbor,, 
the proclamation of Lincoln, calling for troops to make art 
1 



2 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

unconstitutional war on the seceded States, and the conse- 
quent secession of Virginia, found General Lee a colonel in 
the United States Army, with a character and reputation 
which would have insured him the highest military honors 
within the gift of the United States Government. In fact, 
it has been said that the command of the army intended for 
the invasion of the South was tendered him. , However, re- 
jecting all overtures made to him, as soon as he learned the 
action of his native State, in a dignified manner, and without 
parade or show, he tendered his resignation, with the deter- 
mination to share the fate of his State, his friends, and kin- 
dred. The then Governor at once, with the unanimous con- 
sent of the Convention of Virginia, tendered him the com- 
mand of all the forces of the State. This he accepted, and 
promptly repaired to Richmond, to enter upon the discharge 
of his duties, knowing that this act must be attended with a 
very heavy pecuniary loss to himself on account of the local- 
ity of his estates. Those who witnessed his appearance 
before the convention, saw his manly bearing, and heard the 
fe"v/ grave, dignified, and impressive words with which he 
consecrated himself and his sword to the cause of his native 
State, can never forget that scene. All felt at once that we 
had a leader worthy of the State and the cause. 

" As a member of the military committee of the conven- 
tion, and afterward as a subordinate under him, I was in a 
condition to witness and know the active energy and utter 
abnegation of all personal considerations with which he de- 
voted himself to the work of organizing and equipping the 
Virginia troops for the field. While he bore no active part 
in the first military operations of the war, yet I can safely 
say that, but for the capacity and energy displayed by Gen- 
eral Lee in organizing and equipping troops to be sent to the 
front, our army would not have been in a condition to gain 
the first victory at Manassas. I do not, however, intend, by 
this statement, to detract from the merit of others. The 
Confederate Government, then recently removed to Rich- 



THE SOLDIER. 3 

mond, did well its part in bringing troops from the South ; 
and I take pleasure in bearing testimony to the fidelity and 
ability with which the then Governor of Yirginia cooperated 
with General Lee in his efforts to furnish men as well as the 
munitions of war. 

" His first appearance in the field, as a commander, was 
in Western Yirginia, after the reverses in that quarter. The 
expectations formed in regard to his operations there were 
not realised, and, though he met with no disaster or defeat 
to his troops, the campaign was regarded as a failure. The 
public never thought of inquiring into the causes of that 
failure, and it is not to be denied that an impression pre- 
vailed among those who did not know him well, that Gen- 
eral Lee was not suited to be a commander in an active cam- 
paign. There were some editors who, while safely intrenched 
behind the impregnable columns of their newspapers, proved 
themselves to be as fierce in war as they had been wise in 
peace, and no bad representatives of the snarling Thersites, 
and these hurled their criticisms and taunts, "svitli no sparing 
hand, at the head of the unsuccessful commander. It would 
be profitless, now, to inquire into the causes of the failures 
in Western Yu-ginia. It is sufficient to say that they were 
not attributable to the want of capacity or energy in the 
commanding general. 

" He was, subsequently, sent to the Southern seaboard, for 
the purpose of supervising the measures for its defense, and 
he proved himseK a most accomplished engineer, and ren- 
dered most valuable services in connection with the seaboard 
defenses in that quarter. 

" In March, 1862, he was called to Richmond, and charged 
with the conduct of military operations in the armies of the 
Confederacy, under the direction of the President. Just be- 
fore that time, the evacuation of Manassas took place ; and, 
subsequently, the transfer of the bulk of the opposing armies 
in Yirginia to the Peninsula, the evacuation of Yorktown 
and the line of Warwick River, the battle of Williamsburg, 



4 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

and the transfer of tlie seat of war to the Chickahominy, in 
the vicinity of Richmond, occuiTed. 

" On the 31st of May and 1st of June, the battle of Seven 
Pines was fought, and General Johnston was so severely 
wounded as to be disabled for duty in the field for some 
time. Fortunately, the eminent and patriotic statesman who 
was at the head of the Government well knew the merits of 
General Lee, and at once assigned him to the vacant com- 
mand ; and then, in fact, began that career to which I invite 
your attention. 

" When General Lee assumed command of the army, which 
before that time had borne the name of the ' Army of the 
Potomac,' but was soon rechristened by the name of the 
'Army of ISTorthern Yirginia,' he found the Confederate 
capital beleaguered by an army of over one hundred thousand 
men, with a very large train of field and siege guns, while 
his own force was very little more than half that of the 
enemy. Nevertheless, he conceived the idea of relieving the 
capital of the threatening presence of the besieging army, by 
one of those bold strategic movements of which only great 
minds are capable. General Jackson, by his rapid move- 
ments and brilliant operations in the Yalley, had prevented 
the march of a column of about forty thousand men, under 
McDowell, from Fredericksbm'g on Richmond, to unite with 
the besieging army ; and a part of McDowell's force, and 
Fremont's army from Northwestern Yirginia, had been sent 
to the Yalley, for the purpose of crushing Jackson. It was 
very apparent that Jackson's force, then consisting of his own 
command proper, Johnson's command from Alleghany Moun- 
tain, and Ewell's division, could not long withstand the 
heavy forces concentrating against it ; and that, when it was 
overwhelmed, the enemy's troops operating in the Yalley and 
covering Washington would be at liberty to move on Rich- 
mond ; while the detachment, from the army defending that 
city, of a force large enough to enable Jackson to contend 
successfully, in a protracted campaign, with the forces accu- 



THE SOLDIER. g 

mulating against him, woiild probably insui'e tlie fall of the 
Confederate capital. Preparations were, therefore, made to 
attack the besieging army, with the forces covering Richmond 
and in the Yalley, by a combined movement. Some reen- 
forcements were brought from the South, and three brigades 
were sent to the Yalley, for the pui-pose of deceiving the 
enemy, and facilitating the withdrawal of General Jackson. 
Fortunately, that able and energetic commander had been 
enabled to prevent the junction of Fremont's army with the 
troops sent from McDowell's command, and, taking advan- 
tage of their separation and the swollen condition of the 
water-courses, had defeated both forces in succession, and so 
bewildered their commanders by the rapidity of his move- 
ments, that they retreated down the Yalley, under the appre- 
hension that Washington was in danger. Leaving all of his 
cavalry but one regiment to watch the enemy and mask his 
own movement, General Jackson, on the 17th of June, com- 
menced his march toward the enemy's lines near Richmond, 
in compliance with the plan and orders of General Lee ; 
and on the 26th of June, less than four weeks after General 
Lee had been assigned to the command of the army, his at- 
tacking columns swung around McClellan's right flank, and 
fell like an avalanche on the besieging army. Next day, 
Jackson was up, and then ensued that succession of brilliant 
engagements which so much accelerated McClellan's famous 
' change of base,' and sent his shattered army to Harrison's 
Landing, under cover of the gunboats on the James. 

" To give you some idea of the boldness and daring of 
this movement, and the impression it made on the enemy, I 
will call your attention to some facts and figures. 

"In his report, dated in August, 1863, and printed in 
1864:, McClellan gives the strength of the troops under his 
command at Washington, on the Potomac, and within reach, 
on the 1st of March, 1862, as — 

" ' Present for duty, one hundred and ninety-three thou- 
sand one hundred and forty-two.' 



6 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" A portion of tliis force liad been left to operate in the 
Valley, another to cover Washington ; and he puts the 
strength of the ' Army of the Potomac,' which designation 
his army bore, on the 20th day of June, 1862, just six days 
before the battles began, at — 

" ' Present for duty, one hundred and five thousand eight 
hundred and twenty-five.' 

" lie further says that he had sixty batteries with his 
army, aggregating three hundred and forty field-pieces. Be- 
sides these he had a large train of siege-guns. 

" General Lee's whole force, of all arms, including the 
troops of Magruder, Huger, Holmes, and Jackson, when the 
latter arrived, did not reach eighty thousand effective men, 
and of these, Holmes's command, over six thousand strong, 
did not actively engage in any of the battles. There were 
thirty-nine brigades of infantry in all engaged on our side in 
the battles around Richmond, inclusive of Holmes's com- 
mand. The strength of twenty-three of them is given in 
the oflicial reports, and was forty-seven thousand and thirty- 
four, including the batteries attached to a number of them. 
In these were embraced the very largest brigades in the 
army, as, for instance, Lawton's. The sixteen brigades, whose 
strength is not given, were four of A. P. Hill's, two of Long- 
street's, two of Huger's, and eight of Jackson's. Taking 
the average of those whose strength is given for the eight 
brigades of A. P. HiU, Longstreet, and Huger, and an aver- 
age of fifteen hundred for Jackson's eight brigades — which 
would be a very liberal estimate for the latter, considering 
the heavy fighting and long and rapid marches they had gone 
through — and it will give about seventy-five thousand men, 
including a nimiber of batteries attached to the brigades. 
The cavalry with the army was less than two brigades, and 
that, with the artillery not included in the reports of bri- 
gades, could not have reached five thousand men. The 
field-guns with om* army, which were all that were used, 
were not near half as many as those of the enemy, and many 



THE SOLDIER. 7 

of them were of inferior metal and pattern. We had not, 
then, had an opportunity of supplying ourselves with the 
improved guns of the enemy. Much the largest portion of 
our small-arms consisted of the smooth-bore musket, while 
the ei;Lemy was well supplied with improved rifle-muskets. 

" From the data I have given, you will perceive that I 
have not under-estimated the strength of the forces at General 
Lee's command ; and this was the largest army he ever com- 
manded. The idea of relie\ang Richmond, by an attack on 
McClellan's flank and rear, was a masterly conception, and 
the boldness, not to say audacity, of it will appear when we 
take into consideration the relative strength of the two ar- 
mies, and the fact that, in swinging around the enemy's flank, 
General Lee left very little over twenty-five thousand men 
between the capital and the besieging army. Timid minds 
might regard this as rashness, but it was the very perfection 
of a profound and daring strategy. Had McClellan ad- 
vanced to the assault of the city, through the open plains 
around it, his destruction would have been insured. As it 
was, his only chance for escape was in a retreat through the 
swamps and forests, which concealed and sheltered his col- 
umns on their flight to the banks of the James. JSTotwith- 
standing the favorable nature of the country for his escape, 
McClellan's army would have been annihilated, had General 
Lee's orders been promptly and rigidly carried out by his 
subordinates. The bloody battle of Malvern Hill would not 
have been fought ; and, when it was fought, a crushing defeat 
would have been inflicted on the enemy, had the plans of the 
commanding general been carried into execution, as I could 
demonstrate to you, if it were profltable to enter into such a 
disquisition. McClellan was glad enough to escape from 
that fleld with his shattered forces, though he pretended to 
claim a victory ; and the pious Lincoln gave ' ten thousand 
thanks for it.' 

"McClellan always insisted that we had overwhelming 
numbers against him, and this hallucination seems to have 



8 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

haunted him until the close of his career, if he is yet rid of 
it. On the night of the 25th of June, he telegraphed to 
Stanton as follows : 

"'I incline to think that Jackson will attack my right 
and rear. The rebel force is stated at two hundred thou- 
sand, including Jackson and Beauregard. I shall have to 
contend against vastly superior odds if these reports be true. 
But this army will do all in the power of men to hold their 
position, and repulse any attack.' 

" In his report he says : 

" ' The report of the chief of the " secret-service coi-ps," 
herewith forwarded, and dated the 26th of June [1862], 
shows the estimated strength of the enemy, at the time of 
the evacuation of Yorktown, to have been from one hundred 
thousand to one hundred and twenty thousand. The same 
report puts his numbers, on the 26th of June, at about one 
hmidred and eighty thousand, and the specific information 
obtained regarding their organization warrants the belief that 
this estimate did not exceed his actual strength.' 

" He missed it by only one hundred thousand, and his 
statement shows the impression made on him by the fight- 
ing of our army under General Lee, and which he never got 
over. All the time he was at his * new base,' he was afflicted 
with this dread phantom of overwhelming numbers against 
him, which, according to his account, were being constantly 
increased, and he begged most earnestly for reenf orcements. 
Halleck, then lately appointed commander-in-chief at Wash- 
ington, visited Harrison's Landing about the last of July, 
and after he got back, he reported, in waiting, to the Secre- 
tary of War, that McClellan and his officers represented our 
forces, then, at not less than two hundred thousand, and his 
own force at about ninety thousand. 

" A new commander had now appeared in Yirginia, on 
the north of the Rapidan, in the person of Major-General 
John Pope, whose headquarters were in the saddle ; who 
had never seen any thing of the ' rebels ' but their backs ; 



THE SOLDIER. 9 

and who felt no concern wliatever about strength of posi- 
tions, bases of supplies, or lines of retreat. All he wanted 
to know, was, where the ' rebels ' were, so that he might ' go 
at them ; ' and he left the lines of retreat to take care of 
themselves, while the ' enemy's country ' was to be the base 
of his supplies. His army, according to his own statement, 
amounted to over forty-three thousand men. General Jack- 
son had been quietly sent up to Gordonsville, with his own 
and Ewell's divisions, which were soon followed by that of 
A. P. Hill. While McClellan was trembling at the idea of 
vastly superior numbers accumulating against him, Pope tele- 
graphed to Halleck : 

" ' The enemy is reported to be evacuating Richmond, 
and falling back on Danville and Lynchburg.' 

" General Jackson soon began to show Pope some things 
that were entirely new to him. The battle of Cedar Kun, or 
Slaughter's Mountain, was fought on the 9th of August, and 
a ' change came over the spirit ' of Pope's dream. In fact, 
he began to see some remarkable sights, with which he was 
destined to soon become familiar. About this time, McClel- 
lan sent a dispatch to Halleck, in which is this striking 
passage : 

" ' I don't like Jackson's movements ; he will suddenly 
appear when least expected.' 

" There were not many, on that side, who did like Gen- 
eral Jackson's ways. The authorities at Washington were 
completely bewildered by his new eccentricities, and the 
evacuation of the ' new base,' which had been assumed with 
so much ability and celerity, was peremptorily ordered. 

" BmTiside soon arrived at Fredericksburg with thirteen 
thousand men, brought from North and South Carolina, 
eight thousand of whom, under Reno, were sent to Pope. 
In the mean time. General Lee had been watching McClel- 
lan's force, and, having become convinced that there was no 
immediate danger to Richmond, he determined to move 
against Pope, for the purpose of crushing him before he 



]0 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

could be reenforced, and entirely relieving Kiclimond, by- 
forcing McClellan to go to the defense of Washington. 
Leaving D. H. Hill's and McLaws's divisions, two brigades 
under J. G. "Walker, a brigade of cavalry under Hampton, 
and some other troops, at Drury's and Chaffin's Bluffs, to 
watch McClellan, General Lee moved with the remainder of 
his army to the Rapidan. Getting wind of the intended 
movement against him, by the accidental capture of a dis- 
patch to Stuart, Pope fell back behind the Rappahannock, 
and the two armies soon confronted each other on its banks. 
A raid by Stuart to Pope's rear resulted in the capture of 
the latter's headquarters and his correspondence, which latter 
showed that McClellan's army was hastenmg to Pope's assist- 
ance. D. H. Hill, McLaws, Walker, and Hampton, were 
ordered forward at once, and while Pope was looking stead- 
ily to the front for the ' rebels,' without thought for his base 
of supplies, and in utter oblivion of any possible line of re- 
treat, General Jackson was sent on that remarkably bold and 
dashing expedition to the enemy's rear, for the purpose of 
destroying Pope's communications, and preventing the ad- 
vance of McClellan's ai-my to his assistance. Pope now 
found it necessary to look out for his supplies and his line of 
retreat, and then ensued that series of engagements called 
' the second battle of Manassas.' Pope had already been 
joined by two coi-ps of McClellan's army, Porter's and 
Heintzelman's, the one by the way of Fredericksburg, and 
the other over the railroad ; and Jackson's three divisions. 
numbering less than twenty thousand men, after cutting the 
raih'oad, and destroying several strains of cars and immense 
stores at Manassas, which could not be removed for want of 
transportation, withstood for two days, beginning on the 
28th of August, Pope's entire army, reenforced by Reno's 
eight thousand men, and McClellan's two corps, while Gen- 
eral Lee was moving up with Longstreet's and Anderson's 
commands. Never did General Jackson display his leading 
characteristics more conspicuously than on this occasion, and 



THE SOLDIER. H' 

lie fully justified the confidence of the commanding general, 
in intrusting him with the execution of one of the most brill- 
iant and daring strategic movements on record. Every attack 
by Pope's immense anny was repulsed with heavy slaughter, 
and during the 29 th all the fighting on our side was done by 
Jackson's corps, except an affair about dusk between a part 
of McDowell's corps and the advance of Longstreet's com- 
mand, which began to arrive between eleven and twelve in 
the day, but did not become engaged until at the close, when 
an advance was made along the Warrenton Pike, by one of 
McDowell's divisions, under the very great delusion that 
Jackson was retreating. On the morning of the 30th the 
attacks on Jackson's position, on the line of an unfinished 
railroad-track, were renewed, and continued until the after- 
noon, with the same result as the day before. Longstreet 
did not become engaged until late in the afternoon, when, 
by a combined attack, Pope's army was driven across Bull 
Run in great disorder and with immense loss. 

"Pope's report and telegraphic correspondence afford a 
rich fund of amusement for those acquainted with the facts 
of his brief campaign in Yirginia, but this I must pass over. 

" He claimed to have entirely defeated and routed Jack- 
son on the 29th, and he actually had one corps commander 
cashiered for not cutting off the retreat and capturing the 
whole force, which he claims to have routed. In a dispatch 
to Halleck, dated 5.30 a. m., on the 30th, he says : 

" ' "We have lost not less than eight thousand men, killed 
and wounded; but, from the appearance of the field, the 
enemy lost at least two to one. He stood strictly on the 
defensive, and every assault was made by ourselves. The 
battle was fought on the identical field of Bull Run, which 
greatly increased the enthusiasm of the men. The news just 
reaches me from the front that the enemy is retiring toward 
the mountains. I go forward at once to see. We have made 
great captures, but I am not able, yet, to form an idea 
of their extent.' 



12 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" He went forward, and saw more than was agreeable to 
him, and found that he had captured a ' Tartar.' 

" In a dispatch dated 9.45 p. m., on the 30th, after the 
great battle of that day was over, he said : 

" ' The battle was most furious for hours without cessa- 
tion, and the losses on both sides were very heavy. The 
enemy is badly whipped, and we shall do well enough. Do 
not be uneasy. "We will hold our own here.' 

" To this Halleck repKed on the morning of the 31st : 

" ' Tou have done nobly. Don't yield another inch if you 
can avoid it. All reserves are being sent forward.' 

" Yet, after all of McClellan's troops, except one division 
left at Yorktown, had arrived, and before another gun had 
been fired. Pope telegraphed to Halleck, at 10.45 a. m., on 
the 31st : 

" ' I should like to know whether you feel secure about 
"Washington, should this army be destroyed. I shall fight it 
as long as a man will stand up to the work.' 

" The army that had been so badly whipped on the 30th, 
was soon advancing against Pope again. Jackson, by another 
flank movement, struck the retreating anny at Chantilly or 
Ox Hill, and the shattered remains of it, now reenforced by 
two fresh corjDs and a division of McClellan's army, were 
hurled into the fortifications around "Washington. 

" Major-General John Pope had now seen as much of the 
' rebels ' as he cared to look upon, and he disappeared from 
the scene of action, in many respects ' a wiser if not a better 
man.' To get him as far as possible from the dangerous 
proximity, he was sent to the extreme Northwest to look 
after the red-men of the plains. "When we recollect the bom- 
bastic proclamations and orders of Pope at the beginning of 
his brief campaign, and the rapidity with which he was 
brought to grief, there appears so much of the ludicrous in 
the whole, that we are almost tempted to overlook the fiend- 
ish malignity which characterized some of his orders and 
acts. 



THE SOLDIER. 13 

" In his report, after saying — 

" ' Every indication, during the night of the 29th, and up 
to ten o'clock on the morning of the 30th, pointed to the 
retreat of the enemy from our front ' — 

" He further says : 

" ' During the whole night of the 29th and the morning 
of the 30th, the advance of the main army, under Lee, was 
arriving on the field to reenf orce Jackson, bo that by twelve 
or one o'clock in the day we were confronted by forces greatly 
superior to our own ; and these forces were being, every 
moment, largely increased by fresh aiTivals of the enemy in 
the direction of Thoroughfare Gap.' So that this was another 
case of overwhelming numbers on our side. 

" Pope's army was originally, according to his statement, 
forty-three thousand, and, according to Halleck, forty thou- 
sand. He had been reenf orced by eight thousand men under 
Reno ; a body of troops from the Kanawha Yalley, under 
Cox ; another from "Washington, under Sturgis, and all of 
McClellan's army, except one division, say eighty-five thou- 
sand men. General Lee had then between one hundred and 
thirty-five thousand and one hundred and forty thousand men 
to deal with on this occasion. The whole of McClellan's 
force was not up at the battle of the 30th, but all of it, except 
the one division of Keyes's corps left at Yorktown, was up 
by the time of the affair at Ox Hill, on the 1st of September. 
General Lee's whole force, at second Manassas, did not ex- 
ceed fifty thousand men. ITeither D. H. Hill's, nor McLaws's, 
nor Walker's division of infantry, nor Hampton's brigade of 
cavalry, had. arrived, and neither of them got up until after 
the affair at Ox Hill. "VVe had only twenty-nine brigades of 
infantry and two of cavaliy present at second Manassas, one 
of the latter being very weak. One of the infantry brigades, 
Starke's Louisiana brigade, had been formed of regiments 
attached to other brigades at the battles around Richmond, 
and another had arrived from the South during July. This 
latter brigade constituted all the reenf orcements, except men 



14 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

returned from convalescence, received after these battles, and 
was twenty-two hundred strong the last of July. The whole 
force in the department of Northern Virginia, on the 31st 
of July, 1862, was sixty-nine thousand five hundred and 
fifty-nine for duty. Deduct, ratably, for the twelve infantry 
brigades, with their proportion of artillery, and the one cav- 
alry brigade absent, besides troops on detached duty at 
various points, and you will see how General Lee's army 
must have been under fifty thousand at second Manassas. 
Yet it had sent the combined armies of Pope and McClellan 
into the defenses of Wasliington, in a very crippled condition, 
and thrown the Government there into a great panic in 
regard to the safety of that city. Fredericksburg had been 
evacuated, and the remainder of Bumside's corps brought to 
"Washington, while a call had been made for three hundred 
thousand new troops. 

" Notwithstanding the exhaustion of his troops from the 
heavy tax on all their energies, the heavy losses in battle, and 
the want of commissary stores, General Lee now undertook 
the bold scheme of crossing the Potomac into Maryland, with 
his army reenf orced by the eleven brigades of infantry, under 
D. H. Hill, McLaws, and TValker, and Hampton's cavalry, 
which were coming up. On the 3d of September our army 
was put in motion, and, passing through Leesburg, it crossed 
over and concentrated at and near Frederick City, by the 7th 
of the month. This movement threw the authorities at 
"Washington into great consternation and dismay. McClellan 
had been assigned to the command of all the troops in and 
around "Washington, and the correspondence between himseK 
and Halleck, conducted mostly by telegraph, shows how utter- 
ly bewildered they were. Both of them were firmly im- 
pressed with the conviction that our nmnbers were over- 
whelming, and they did not know where to look for the im- 
pending blow. McClellan moved out of the city with great 
caution, feeling his way gradually toward Frederick, while a 
considerable force, which was constantly augmented by the 



THE SOLDIER. 15 

arrival of new troops, was retained at "Washington, for fear that 
city should be captured by a sudden couj) from the south side. 
A considerable force had been isolated at Harper's Ferry, and 
General Lee sent Jackson's coi'ps, McLaws's, Anderson's, and 
"Walker's divisions, in all twenty-six brigades of infantry, 
with the accompanying artillery, to invest and capture that 
place, retaining with himself only fourteen brigades of infan- 
try, with the accompanying and reserve artillery, and the 
main body of the cavahy, with which he crossed to the west 
side of the South Mountain. The order directing these 
movements, by some accident, fell into McClellan's hands on 
the 13th, and he hurried his troops forward to attack the 
small force with General Lee, and relieve Harper's FeiTy if 
possible. A sanguinary engagement occurred at Boonsboro' 
Gap, on the 14:th, between D. H. Hill's division, constituting 
the rear-guard of the column with General Lee, and the bulk 
of McClellan's army ; and Hill, after maintaining his position 
for many hours, was compelled to retire at night with heavy 
loss, the troops sent to his assistance not having arrived in 
time to repulse the enemy. That night, Longstreet's and 
Hill's commands crossed the Antietam to Sharpsburg, where 
they took position on the morning of the 15th. In the mean 
time. Harper's Ferry had been invested, and surrendered on 
the morning of the 15th — our victory being almost a blood- 
less one, so far as the resistance of the garrison was concerned ; 
but McLaws and Anderson had had very heavy fighting, on 
the Maryland side, with a part of McClellan's anny. As 
soon as General Lee heard of the success at Harper's Ferry, 
he ordered all the troops operating against that place to move 
to Sharpsburg as soon as practicable. Leaving A. P. HiU, 
with his division, to dispose of the prisioners and property 
captured at Harper's Ferry, General Jackson, late in the after- 
noon of the 15th, ordered his own division and Ewell's, the 
latter now under Lawton, to Sharpsburg, where they arrived 
early on the morning of the 16th. "Walker's two brigades 
came up later in the day. The ten brigades brought by Jack- 



16 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

son and Walker made twenty-four brigades of infantry, with 
the fourteen already on the ground, which General Lee had 
with him when the battle of Sharpsburg opened on the morn- 
ing of the lYth of September. Jackson's division was placed 
on the left flank, and Hood's two brigades, which were next 
to it on the right, were relieved by two brigades of Ewell's 
division during the night of the 16th, and these were reen- 
forced by another very early the next morning. General 
Jackson's whole force on the field consisted of five thousand 
infantry and a very few batteries of his own division. One 
brigade, my own, numbering about one thousand men and 
officers, was detached, at light, toward the Potomac on our 
left, to support some artillery with which Stuart was operat- 
ing ; so that General Jackson had only four thousand infan- 
try in line, and J). H. Hill was immediately on his right, hold- 
ing the centre and left centre with his division, then three 
thousand strong. General Lee's whole infantry force on the 
field, at the beginning of the battle, did not exceed fifteen 
thousand men, including Jackson's and Walker's commands. 
On the left and left centre, McClellan hurled, in succession, 
the four corps of Hooker, Mansfield, Sumner, and Franklin, 
numbering, in the aggregate, fifty-six thousand and ninety-five 
men, according to his report ; and a sanguinary battle raged 
for several hours, during which. Hood's two brigades, my 
brigade. Walker's two brigades, Anderson's brigade of D. R. 
Jones's division, and McLaws's and Anderson's di\T;sions, suc- 
cessively went to the support of the part of the line assailed, 
at different points, the last two divisions having arrived late 
in the morning, during the progress of the battle. And all 
the troops engaged, from first to last, with the enemy's fifty- 
six thousand and ninety-five men, on that wing, did not ex- 
ceed eighteen thousand men. At the close of the fighting 
there, our left was advanced beyond where it rested in the 
morning, while the centre had been forced back some two 
hundred yards. 

" In the afternoon, Bumside's corps, over thirteen thou- 



TDE SOLDIER. 17 

sand strong, attacked our right, and, after gaining some ad- 
vantage, was driven back with the aid of three of A. P. 
Hill's brigades, which had just arrived from Harper's Ferry. 
At the close of the battle, we held our position firmly, with 
the centre slightly forced back, as I have stated. We con- 
tinued to hold the position during the 18th, and McClellan 
did not venture to renew the attack. In the mean time, 
heavy reenf orcements were moving to his assistance, two divi- 
sions of which. Couch's and Hmnphrey's, fourteen thousand 
strong, arrived on the 18th, while General Lee had no possi- 
bility of being reenforced except by the stragglers who 
might come up, and they constituted a poor dependence. 
The Potomac was immediately in his rear, and, as it would 
have been f oUy for him to have waited until an overpower- 
ing force was accumulated against him, he very properly and 
judiciously retired on the night of the 18th, and recrossed 
the river early on the morning of the 19th. A very feeble 
effort at pursuit by one corps was most severely punished 
by A. P. Hill's division on the 20th. 

" This was one of the most remarkable battles of the war, 
and has been but little understood. You will, therefore, par- 
don me for going somewhat into detail in regard to it. 
When General Lee took his position on the morning of the 
15th, he had with him but fourteen brigades of infantry, be- 
sides the artillery and cavalry. The official reports show 
that D. H. Hill's five brigades numbered then only three 
thousand men for duty, and six brigades under D. P. Jones 
only twenty-four hundred and thirty men. The strength 
of three brigades is not given, but they were not more 
than of an average size — and, estimating their strength 
in that way, it would give less than seven thousand five 
hundred infantry with which, and the artillery and cavalry 
with him, General Lee confronted McClellan's army during 
the whole of the 15th and part of the 16th. The arrival of 
Jackson's and Walker's commands did not increase the in- 
fantry to more than fifteen thousand men, and they brought 
2 



18 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

very little artillery with them. During the day, McLaws, 
Anderson, and A. P. Hill, came up with thirteen brigades, 
making thirty-seven brigades which participated in the battle. 
The official reports give the strength of twenty-seven of these, 
amounting in the aggregate to sixteen thousand nine hun- 
dred and twenty-three men. Taking the average for the 
other ten — and they were not more than average brigades, 
if that — and it would give about twenty-three thousand in- 
fantry engaged on our side from first to last. The cavalry, 
consisting of three brigades, which were not strong, was not 
engaged and merely watched the flanks. A very large por- 
tion of our artillery, which had been used against Harper's 
Ferry, had not arrived, and did not get up until after night- 
fall, when the battle was over. We had, in fact, comparative- 
ly few guns engaged, and the enemy's guns were not only 
very numerous, but of heavier metal and longer range. 
Taking the whole force, including the cavalry and the artil- 
lery, when all of the latter had arrived, and we had less than 
thirty thousand men of all arms at this battle, from first to 
last. - General Lee, in his report, says that he had less than 
forty thousand men ; but, for reasons that can be well under- 
stood, he never did disclose his own weakness at any time, 
even to his own officers. 

" When our army started for Maryland, after the affair at 
Ox Hill, it was out of rations, badly clothed, and worse shod. 
At the time of the battle of Sharpsburg, it had been march- 
ing and fighting for near six weeks, and the straggling from 
exhaustion, sore feet, and in search of food, had been terrible, 
before we crossed the Potomac. When it is recollected that 
the entire force at the end of July, in all the Department of 
Northern Virginia, was only a very little over sixty-nine 
thousand men, of which sixty thousand, including D. H. 
Hill's, McLaws's, and Walker's divisions, would be a liberal 
estimate for all that were carried into the field, you will see 
that a loss of thirty thousand in battle, from Cedar Kun to 
South Mountain, inclusive, and from the other causes named, 



THE SOLDIER. 19 

it is not an unreasonable estimate. In fact, at the end of 
September, when the stragglers had been gathered up, and 
many of the sick and womided had returned to dutj, with 
the additions from the conscripts, the official returns show 
only fifty-two thousand six hundred and nine for duty in 
the whole Department of Northern Virginia. 

" McClellan, in his report, gives his own force at eighty- 
seven thousand one hundred and sixty-four in action, and he 
gives an estimate of General Lee's army, in detail, in which 
he places our strength at ninety-seven thousand four hundred 
and forty-five men and four hundred guns at this battle. 
Truly, our boys in gray had a wonderful faculty of magnify- 
ing and multiplying themselves in battle ; and McClellan 
could not have paid a higher compliment to their valor, and 
the ability of our commander, than he has done by this esti- 
mate of our strength, as it appeared to him. 

" In giving his reasons for not renewing the battle on the 
18th, he says : 

" ' One division of Sumner's coi-ps, and all of Hooker's 
corps on the right, had, after fighting most valiantly for several 
hours, been overpowered by numbers, driven in great disor- 
der and much scattered, so that they were for the time some- 
what demoralized.' 

" I have shown how they were outnumbered. 

" Burnside, in his testimony before the committee on the 
conduct of the war, said : 

" ' I was told at General McCleUan's headquarters, that 
our right had been so badly broken that they could not be 
got together for an attack, and they would have to wait for 
reinforcements ; and that General Smnner advised General 
McClellan not to renew the attack, because of the condition 
of his corps ; and it was also stated that very little of Gen- 
eral Hooker's corps was left.' 

" This was on the night of the lYth, after the battle was 
over. On the 27th, McClellan wrote to Halleck as follows : 

" ' In the last battles the enemy was undoubtedly greatly 



20 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

superior to us in numbers, and it was only by bard figbting 
tbat we gained tbe advantage we did. As it was, tbe result 
was at one time very doubtful, and we bad all we could do 
to win tbe day.' 

" "Win tbe day, indeed ! He bad not dared to renew tbe 
attack on tbe 18tb, and be did not venture to claim a victory 
untU tbe 19tb, wben be found General Lee bad recrossed 
tbe Potomac, and tben be began to breatbe freely and to 
crow, at first feebly, and tben more loudly. "Wbo ever beard 
of a victory by an attacking army in an open field, and yet 
tbe victor was unable to advance against bis antagonist wbo 
stood bis ground ? 

"To give you some idea of tbe immense difficulties Gen- 
eral Lee bad to encounter in tbis campaign, and tbe wonder- 
ful facility tbe enemy bad for raising men, and reenforcing 
bis armies after defeat, tbrougb tbe agencies of tbe telegrapb, 
railroads, and steam-power, let me tell you tbat a certified 
statement compiled from McClellan's morning report of tbe 
20tb of September, 1862, contained in tbe report of tbe com- 
mittee on tbe conduct of tbe war, sbows a grand total pres- 
ent for duty in tbe Army of tbe Potomac, on tbat day, of 
one bundred and sixty-four tbousand tbree bundred and fifty- 
nine, of wbicb seventy-one tbousand two bundred and ten 
were in tbe defenses of Wasbington under Banks, leaving 
ninety -tbree tbousand one bundred and forty -nine witb 
McClellan in tbe field on tbat day. A very large portion of 
tbis force bad been accumulated by means of tbe railroads, 
after tbe defeat of Pope. You may understand now bow it 
was tbat our victories could never be pressed to more decisive 
results. It was genius, and nerve, and valor, on tbe one side, 
against numbers and mecbanical power on tbe otber; even 
tbe ligbtning of tbe beavens being made subservient to tbe 
latter. 

" You may also form some conception of tbe boldness of 
General Lee's movement across tbe Potomac, tbe daring 
of tbe expedition against Harper's Ferry in tbe face of so 



THE SOLDIER. 21 

large a force, and tlie audacity with which he confronted and 
defied McClellan's army on the 15th and 16th, and then 
fought it on the 17th with the small force he had. 

" Sharpsburg was no defeat to our arms, though our army 
was retired to the south bank of the Potomac from pruden- 
tial considerations. 

" Some persons have been disposed to regard this cam- 
paign into Maryland as a failure, but such was not the case. 
It is true that we had failed to raise Maryland, but it was 
from no disaster to our arms. 

" In a mihtary point of view, however, the whole cam- 
paign, of which the movement into Maryland was an integral 
part, had been a grand success, though all was not accom- 
plished which our fond hopes caused us to expect. "When 
General Lee assumed command of the army at Richmond, a 
besieging army of immense size and resom-ces was in sight of 
the spires of the Confederate capital — all Northern Yirginia 
was in possession of the enemy — the Yalley overrun, except 
when Jackson's vigorous and rapid blows sent the marauders 
staggering to the banks of the Potomac for a brief interval ; 
and Northwestern Yirginia, including the Kanawha Yalley, 
was subjugated and in the firm grasp of the enemy. By 
General Lee's bold strategy and rapid and heavy blows, the 
capital had been reHeved ; the besieging army driven out of 
the State ; the enemy's capital threatened ; his country 
invaded ; Northern Yirginia and the Yalley cleared of the 
enemy ; the enemy's troops from Northwestern Yirginia 
and the Kanawha Yalley had been drawn thence for the 
defense of his own capital; a Confederate force had pene- 
trated to Charleston, Kanawha ; our whole army was supplied 
with the improved fire-arm in the place of the old smooth- 
bore musket ; much of our inferior field-artiUery replaced by 
the enemy's improved guns; and, in addition to our very- 
large captures of prisoners and the munitions of war else- 
where, the direct result of the march across the Potomac was 
the capture of eleven thousand prisoners, seventy-three pieces 



22 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

of artillery, and thirteen thousand stand of excellent small- 
arms, and immense stores at Harper's Ferry. And, at the 
close of the campaign, the Confederate commander stood 
proudly defiant on the extreme northern border of the Con- 
federacy, while his opponent had had ' his base ' removed to 
the northern bank of the Potomac, at a point more than one 
hundred and seventy-five miles from the Confederate capi- 
tal, in a straight line. In addition, the immense army of 
McClellan had been so crippled, that it was not able to 
resume the offensive for six weeks. Such had been the 
moral effect upon the enemy, that the Confederate capital 
was never again seriously endangered, until the power of the 
Confederacy had been so broken in other quarters, and its 
available territory so reduced in dimensions, that the enemy 
could concenti-ate his immense resources against the capital. 

" All this had been the result of that plan of operations, 
of which the invasion of Maryland formed an important 
part. Look at the means placed at the command of General 
Lee, and the immense numbers and resources brought against 
him, and then say if the results accompKshed by him were 
not marvelous? If his Government had been able to fur- 
nish him with men and means, at all commensurate with his 
achievements and his conceptions, he would, in September, 
1862, have dictated the terms of peace in the capital of the 
enemy. But all the wonderful powers of the mechanic arts 
and physical science, backed by unlimited resources of men 
and money, still continued to operate against him. 

" A certified statement from McClellan's morning report 
of the 30th of September, contained in the document from 
which I have already quoted, showed, in the Army of the 
Potomac, a grand total of one hundred and seventy-three 
thousand seven hundred and forty-five present for duty on 
that day, of which seventy-three thousand six hundred and 
one were in the defenses of Washington, and one hundi'ed 
thousand one hundred and forty-four with him in the field ; 
and a similar statement showed, on the 20th of October, a 



THE SOLDIER. 23 

grand total of two hundred and seven thousand and thirty- 
six present for duty on that day, of which seventy-three 
thousand five hundi'ed and ninety-three were in the defenses 
of Washington, and one hundred and thirty-thi-ee thousand 
four- hundred and forty-three with McClellan in the field. 

" At the close of October, according to the official returns 
now on file at the ' Archive Office ' in Washington, the 
whole Confederate force for duty in the department of 
l!^orthern Virginia amoimted to sixty-seven thousand eight 
hundred and five. A considerable portion of this force was 
not with General Lee in the field. 

" At the close of October, McClellan commenced a new 
movement with his immense army, across the Potomac, east 
of the Blue Kidge, while General Lee was yet in the Yalley. 
As this movement was developed, Longstreet's corps and the 
cavalry under Stuart were promptly moved to intercept it, 
Jackson's corps being left in the Valley. McClellan was soon 
superseded in the command by Burnside, and, when the latter 
turned his steps toward the heights opposite Fredericksbm-g, 
Jackson was ordered to rejoin the rest of the army. In the 
mean time, Bumside's attempt to approach Richmond on the 
new line had been checkmated, and he soon found himself 
confronted on the Rappahannock by the whole of General 
Lee's army. That army had to be stretched out, for some 
thirty miles, up and down the river, to watch the different 
crossings. The enemy began his movement to cross at and 
near Fredericksbm-g, on the morning of the 11th of Decem- 
ber, and the crossing was resisted and delayed for many hours, 
but, owing to the peculiar character of the country imme- 
diately on the south bank, and the advantage the enemy had 
in his commanding position on the north bank, whence 
the wide plains on the south bank, and the town of Fred- 
ericksburg, were completely commanded and swept by an 
immense armament of heavy artillery, that crossing could not 
be prevented. Om- army was rapidly concentrated, and took 
its position on the heights and range of hills in rear of the 



24 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E, LEE. 

town and the plains below ; and, when the heavy columns ot 
the enemy advanced to the assault on the 13th, first on our 
right, near Hamilton's crossing, and then on our left, in rear 
of Fredericksburg, they were hurled back with immense 
slaughter, to the cover of the artillery on the opposite heights, 
and every renewal of the assault met the same fate. In this 
battle, we stood entirely on the defensive, except once, when 
the enemy penetrated an interval in our line near the right 
flank, and three of my brigades advanced, diiving and pursu- 
ing the enemy into the plains below, until he reached the 
protection of his artillery and the main line. Bumside's loss 
was so heavy, and his troops were so worsted in the assaults 
which had been made, that his principal oflScers protested 
against a renewal of the attack, and on the night of the 15th 
he recrossed to the north bank. 

" In this battle, he had all of McClellan's army, except 
the Twelfth Coi-ps, which was eight or ten thousand strong, 
and had been left at Harper's Ferry, and in lieu of that he had 
a much larger corps, the Third, from the defenses of Wash- 
ington. In his testimony before the committee on the con- 
duct of the war, he says he had one hundred thousand men 
across the river, and he was doubtful which had the supe- 
riority of numbers. In reply to a question as to the causes 
of the failure of the attack, he frankly said : 

" ' It was found to be impossible to get the men up to 
the works. The enemy's fire was too hot for them.' 

" Our whole force present was not much more than half 
that of the enemy, which crossed over to the south side of 
the river. This signal victory, in which the enemy's loss 
was very heavy, and ours comparatively light, closed the 
operations for the year 1862. 

" Some newspaper critics and fireside generals were not 
satisfied with the results of this victory, and thought Burn- 
side's army ought to have been destroyed before it went 
back ; and there were some absurd stories about propositions 
alleged to have been made by General Jackson, for driving 



THE SOLDIER. 25 

the enemy into the river. That great soldier did begin a 
forward movement, about sunset, which I was to have led, 
but, just as my men were moving off, he countermanded the 
movement, because the enemy opened such a terrific artillery 
fire from the Stafford Heights and from behind the heavy 
embankments on the road leading through the bottoms on 
the south side of the river, that it was apparent that nothing 
could have lived in the passage across the plain of about a 
mile in width, over which we would have had to advance, to 
reach the enemy massed in that road. According to the 
statements of himself and officers, before the committee on 
the conduct of the war, Franklin,' who commanded the 
enemy's left, had, confronting our right, from fifty-five to 
sixty thousand men, of whom only about twenty thousand 
had been under fire. The bulk of that force was along the 
Bowling Green road, running parallel to the river through 
the middle of the bottoms, and behind the very compact 
and thick embankments on each side of that road. He had 
taken over with him one hundred and sixteen pieces of ar- 
tilleiy, and there were sixty-one pieces on the north bank, 
some of which were of very large calibre, so posted as to 
cover the bridges on that fiank, and sweep the plain in his 
front. Some of these were also crossed over to him, and 
General Hunt, Burnside's chief of artillery, says fifty ' or 
sixty more pieces could have been spared from their right, if 
necessary. The attempt to drive this force into the river 
would have, therefore, insured our destruction. 

" Franklin had eight divisions with him, while at Freder- 
icksburg, confronting our left, were ten divisions, fully as 
strong, certainly, as Franklin's eight, and there were quite as 
many guns on that fiank. It is true the enemy's loss there 
had been double that in front of our right, but he still had a 
large number of troops on that fiank which had not been en- 
gaged. The character of the ground in front of our position, 
on that flank, was such that our troops could not be moved 
down the rugged slopes of the hills in any order of battle, 



26 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

and any attempt to advance tliem must have been attended 
witli disastrous consequences. Burnside's troops were not so 
demoralked as to prevent him from being anxious to renew 
the attack on the 14th, and the objection of his officers was 
not on account of the condition of their troops, but on ac- 
count of the strength of our position, l^othing could have 
gratified him and his officers more, than for us to have sur- 
rendered our advantage and taken the offensive. General 
Lee, ever ready to strike when an opportunity offered, knew 
better than all others when it was best to attack and when 
not to attack. 

" It is a notable facTt about all those people who favored 
such blood-thirsty and desperate measures, that they were 
never in the army, to share the dangers into which they were 
so anxious to rush others. 

"About the close of the winter or beginning of the 
spring of 1863, two of Longstreet's divisions, one-fourth of 
our army, were sent to the south side of James River ; and, 
during their absence. Hooker, who had succeeded Burnside 
in the command, commenced the movement which resulted 
in the battle of Chancellorsville, in the first days of May. 
Thi'owing a portion of his troops across the river just below 
Fredericksburg, on the 29th of April, and making an osten- 
tatious demonstration with three corps on the north bank, he 
proceeded to cross f om* others above our left flank to Chan- 
cellorsville. Having accomplished this. Hooker issued a gas- 
conading order to his troops, in which he claimed to have 
General Lee's army in his power, and declared his purpose 
of crushing it. Leaving my division, one brigade of anoth- 
er, and a portion of the reserve artillery, in all less than nine 
thousand men, to confront the three corps opposite and near 
Fredericksbuag, General Lee moved with five divisions of 
infantry and a portion of the artillery to meet Hooker, the 
cavalry being employed to watch the flanks. As soon as 
General Lee reached Hooker's front, he determined to take 
the offensive, and, by one of his bold strategic movements, 



THE SOLDIER. 27 

lie sent Jackson around Hooker's right flank, and that boast- 
ful commander, wlio was successively reenf orced by two of the 
corps left opposite Fredericksburg, was so vigorously assailed 
that he was put on the defensive, and soon compelled to 
provide for the safety of his own defeated army. 

"In the mean time, Sedgwick, whose coi'ps numbered 
about twenty-four thousand men, and who had a division of 
another corps with him, making his whole force about thirty 
thousand, had crossed the river, at and below Fredericksburg, 
with the portion of his troops not already over, and, by 
concentrating three of his divisions on one point of the long 
line, of five or six miles, held by my forces, had on the 3d of 
May, after repeated repulses, broken thi'ough, immediately 
in the rear of Fredericksburg, where the stone-wall was held 
by one regiment and four companies of another, the whole 
not exceeding five hundred men. General Lee was prepar- 
ing to renew the attack on Hooker^ whose force at Chancel- 
lorsville had been driven back to an interior line, when he 
was informed that Sedgwick was moving up in his rear. He 
was then compelled to provide against this new danger, and 
he moved troops down to arrest Sedgwick's progress. This 
was successfully done, and, on the next day (the 4th), three of 
the brigades of my division, all of which had been concentrat- 
ed, and had severed Sedgwick's connection with Fredericks- 
burg and the north bank, fell upon his left flank, and drove 
it toward the river in confusion, while other troops of ours, 
which had come from above, closed in on him and forced his 
whole command into the bend of the river. His whole com- 
mand would now have been destroyed or captured, but night 
came on and an-ested our progress. During the night he 
made his escape over a bridge which was laid down for him. 
General Lee then turned his attention again to Hooker, but 
he also made his escape, the next night, under cover of a 
storm. . Thus another brilliant victory was achieved, by the 
genius and boldness of our commander, against immense odds. 

"•It is a little remarkable that Hooker did not claim, on 



38 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

this occasion, that we had the odds against him ; but, when 
he went back, under compulsion, he issued an order, in which 
he stated that his army had retired for reasons best known 
to itself, that it was the custodian of its own honor and 
advanced when it pleased, fought when it pleased, and re- 
tired when it pleased. 

" In his testimony before the committee on the conduct 
of the war, he made this curious statement : 

" ' Our artillery had always been superior to that of the 
rebels, as was also our infantry, except in discipline ; and 
that, for reasons not necessary to mention, never did equal 
Lee's army. With a rank and file vastly inferior to our 
own, intellectually and physically, that army has, by disci- 
pline alone, acquired a character for steadiness and efficiency 
unsui-passed, in my judgment, in ancient or modern times. 
We have not been able to rival it, nor has there been any 
near approximation to it in the other rebel armies.' 

" This was the impression made by that army, under the 
inspiration of its great leader, on ' fighting Joe,' as he was 
called. The impression made on Lincoln, at that time, may 
be gathered from a telegram sent to Butterfield, Hooker's 
chief -of -staff, who was on the north of the river. The tele- 
gram was sent, when Hooker had taken refuge in his new 
works in rear of Chancellorsville, and Sedgwick was cut off 
in the bend of the river, and is as follows, in full : 

"'Where is General Hooker? Where is Sedgwick? 
Where is Stoneman ? A. LmcoLisr.' 

" Hooker had with him what was left of the army of Biu'n- 
side, except the Ninth Corps, which had been sent off ; but 
two other corps, the Eleventh and Twelfth, had been added, 
besides recruits ; and his whole force was largely over one 
hundred thousand men. General Lee's army, weakened by 
the absence of Longstreet's two divisions, was very little if 
any over fifty thousand men, inclusive of my force at> Fred- 
ericksburg. 

" As glorious as was this victory, it nevertheless shed a 



THE SOLDIER. 29 

gloom over tlie whole army and country, for in it had fallen 
the great Lieutenant to whom General Lee had always in- 
trusted the execution of liis most daring plans, and who had 
proved himself so worthy of the confidence reposed in him. 
It is not necessary for me to stop here, to delineate the char- 
acter and talents of General Jackson. As long as unselfish 
patriotism, Christian devotion and pm-ity of character, and 
deeds of heroism shall command the admiration of men, Stone- 
wall Jackson's name and fame will be reverenced. Of all 
who mourned his death, none felt more acutely the loss the 
country and the army had sustained than General Lee. 
General Jackson had always appreciated, and sympathized 
with the bold conceptions of the commanding general and en- 
tered upon their execution with the most cheerful alacrity 
and zeal. General Lee never found it necessary to accompany 
him, to see that his plans were carried out, but could always 
trust him alone ; and well might he say, when Jackson fell, 
that he himself had lost his ' right arm.' 

" After General Jackson's death, the araiy was divided 
into three corps of three divisions each, instead of two coi'ps 
of four divisions each, the j^inth Division being formed by 
taking two brigades from the division of A. P. Hill and unit- 
ing them with two others which were brought from the South. 
These two brigades constituted all the reenforcements to our 
aiTQy, after the battle of Chancellorsville, and previous to the 
campaign into Pennsylvania. Longstreet's two absent divis- 
ions were now brought back and moved up toward Culpepper 
Court-House, and General Lee entered on a campaign of even 
greater boldness than that of the previous year. 

" While Hooker's army yet occupied the Stafford Heights, 
our army was put in motion for Pennsylvania, on the 4th of 
June, Hill's corps being left for a while to watch Hooker: 
This movement was undertaken because the interposition of 
the Rappahannock, between the two armies, presented an in- 
surmountable obstacle to offensive operations, on our part, 
against the enemy in the position he then occupied, and Gen- 



30 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

eral Lee was determined not to stand on the defensive, and 
give the enemy time to mature his plans and accumulate a 
larger army for another attack on him. 

" The enemy was utterly bewildered by this new move- 
ment, and, while he was endeavoring to find out what it meant, 
the advance of our army, E well's corps, composed of three of 
Jackson's old divisions, entered the Valley and captured, at 
"Winchester and Martinsburg, about four thousand prisoners, 
twenty-nine pieces of artillerj^, about four thousand stand of 
small-arms, a large wagon-train, and many stores. It then 
crossed the Potomac, and two divisions went to Carlisle, while 
another went to the banks of the Susquehanna, through York. 
The two other corps soon followed, and this movement 
brought the whole of Hooker's army across the Potomac in 
pursuit. The two armies concentrated, and encountered 
each other at Gettysburg, east of the South Mountain, in a 
battle extending through three days, from the 1st to the 3d 
of July, inclusive. On the first day, a portion of our army, 
composed of two divisions of Hill's corps, and two divisions 
of Ewell's coi-ps, gained a very decided victory over two of 
the enemy's corps, which latter were driven back, in great 
confusion, through Gettysburg, to the heights, immediately 
south and east of the town, known as Cemetery Hill. On the 
second and third days, we assaulted the enemy's position at 
different points, but failed to dislodge his army, now under 
Meade, from its very strong position on Cemetery and the ad- 
jacent hills. Both sides suffered very heavy losses, that of 
the enemy exceeding ours. 

" Our ammunition had drawn short, and we were beyond 
the reach of any supplies of that kind. General Lee there- 
fore desisted from his efforts to carry the position, and, after 
straightening his line, he confronted Meade for a whole day, 
without the latter's daring to move from his position, and 
then retired toward the Potomac, for the purpose of being 
within reach of supplies. We halted near Hagerstown, Mary- 
land, and when Meade, who had followed us very cautiously, 



THE SOLDIER. 31 

arrived, battle was offered liim, but lie went to fortifying m 
our front. We confronted him for several days, but, as he 
did not venture to attack us, and heavy rains had set in, we 
retired across the Potomac to avoid having an impassable 
river in our rear. 

"The campaign into Pennsylvania and the battle of 
Gettysburg have been much criticised, and but little under- 
Btood. The magnanimity of General Lee caused him to 
withhold from the public the true causes of the failm*e to 
gain a decisive victory at Gettysburg. Many writers have 
racked their brains to account for that failure. Some have 
attributed it to the fact that the advantage gained on the 
first day was not pressed immediately ; and among them is a 
Northern historian of the war (Swinton), who says : ' Ewell 
was even advancing a line against Gulp's Hill when Lee 
reached the field and stayed the movement.' There is no 
foundation for this statement. When General Lee, after the 
engagement, reached the part of the field where Ewell's 
command had fought, it was near dark, and no forward 
movement was in progress or contemplated. Two fresh 
corps of the enemy, Slocum's and Sickles's, had arrived at 
five o'clock, at least two hours before General Lee came to 
us after the engagement. There was a time, as we know 
now, immediately after the enemy was driven back, when, if 
we had advanced vigorously, the heights of Gettysburg 
would probably have been taken, but that was not then ap- 
parent. I was in favor of the advance, but I think it 
doubtful whether it would have resulted in any greater ad- 
vantage than to throw back the two routed corps on the 
main body of their army, and cause the great battle to be 
fought on other ground. Meade had already selected an- 
other position, on Pipe Clay Creek, where he would have 
concentrated his army, and we would have been compelled 
to give him battle or retire. Moreover, it is not impossible 
that the arrival of the two fresh corps may have turned the 
fate of the day against the troops we then had on the field, 



32 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

had we pressed our advantage. General Lee had ordered 
the concentration of his army at Cashtown, and the battle on 
this day, brought on by the advance of the enemy's cavalry, 
was unexpected to him. When he ascertained the advan- 
tage that had been gained, he detennined to press it as soon 
as the remainder of his army arrived. In a conference with 
General Ewell, General Khodes and myself, when he did 
reach us, after the enemy had been routed, he expressed his 
determination to assault the enemy's position at daylight on 
the next morning, and wished to know whether we could 
make the attack from our flank — the left — at the designated 
time. We informed him of the fact that the ground imme- 
diately in our front, leading to the enemy's position, fur- 
nished much greater obstacles to a successful assault than ex- 
isted at any other point, and we concurred in suggesting to 
him that, as our corps (E well's) constituted the only troops 
then immediately confronting the enemy, he would mani- 
festly concentrate and fortify against us, during the night, as 
proved to be the case, according to subsequent informa- 
tion. He then determined to make the attack from our 
right on the enemy's left, and left us for the purpose of 
ordering up Longstreet's corps in time to begin the attack at 
dawn next morning. That corps was not in readiness to 
make the attack until four o'clock in the afternoon of the 
next day. By that time, Meade's whole army had arrived on 
the field and taken its position. Had the attack been made 
at daylight, as contemplated, it must have resulted in a 
brilliant and decisive victory, as all of Meade's army had not 
then arrived, and a very small portion of it was in position. 
A considerable portion of his army did not get up until 
after sunrise, one corps not arriving until two o'clock in the 
afternoon, and a prompt advance to the attack must have 
resulted in his defeat in detail. The position which Long- 
street attacked at four was not occupied by the enemy until 
late in the afternoon, and Round Top Hill, which commanded 
the enemy's position, could have been taken in the morn- 



THE SOLDIER. 33 

ing witliout a struggle. The attack was made by two di- 
visions, and, thongli the usual gallantry was displayed by 
the troops engaged in it, no very material advantage was 
gained. When General Lee saw his plans thwarted by the 
delay on our right, he ordered an attack to be made also 
from our left, to be begun by Johnson's division on Gulp's 
HiE, and followed up by the rest of Ewell's coi*ps, and 
also by Hill's. This attack was begun with great vigor 
by Johnson, and two of my brigades, immediately an his 
right, which were the only portion of the division then 
available, as the other two brigades had been sent off to the 
left to watch the York road, moved forward promptly, 
chmbed the heights on the left of Gettysburg, over stone 
and plank fences, reached the summit of Cemetery Hill, 
and got possession of the enemy's works, and his batteries 
there posted. One of my other brigades had been sent for, 
and got back in time to be ready to act as a support to 
those in front : but, though Johnson was making good prog- 
ress in his attack, there was no movement on my right, and 
the enemy, not being pressed in that direction, concentrated 
on my two brigades in such overwhelming force as to render 
it necessary for them to retire. Thus, after having victory 
in their grasp, they were compelled to relinquish it, because 
General Lee's orders had again failed to be carried out ; but 
one of those brigades brought off four captured battle-flags 
from the top of Cemetery Hill. This affair occurred just a 
little before dark. 

" On the next day, when the assault was made by Pick- 
ett's division in such gallant style, there was again a 'miscar- 
riage, in not properly supporting it according to the plan and 
orders of the commanding general. You must recollect that 
a commanding general cannot do the actual marching and 
fighting of his army. These must, necessarily, be intrusted 
to his subordinates, and any hesitation, delay, or miscar- 
riage in the execution of his orders, may defeat the best-de- 
vised schemes. Contending against such odds as we did, it: 
3 



34 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

was necessary, always, that there should be the utmost dis- 
patch, energy, and undoubting confidence, in carrying out the 
plans of the commanding general. A subordinate who un- 
dertakes to doubt the wisdom of his superior's plans, and 
enters upon their execution with reluctance and distrust, will 
not be likely to insure success. It was G-eneral Jackson's 
unhesitating confidence and faith in the chances of success 
that caused it so often to perch on his banners, and made 
him such an invaluable executor of General Lee's plans. If 
Mr. Swinton has told the truth, in repeating in his book 
what is alleged to have been said to him by General Long- 
street, there was at least one of General Lee's corps com- 
manders at Gettysburg who did not enter upon the execu- 
tion of his plans with that confidence and faith necessary to 
success, and hence, perhaps, it was that it was not achieved. 
Some have thought that General Lee did wrong in fight- 
ing at Gettysburg, and it has been said that he ought to 
have moved around Meade's left, so as to get between him 
and Washington. It is a very easy matter to criticise and 
prophesy after events happen ; but it would have been mani- 
festly a most dangerous movement for him to have under- 
taken to pass Meade by the flank with all his trains. In 
passing through the narrow space between Gettysburg and 
the South Mountain, we would have been exposed to an at- 
tack under very disadvantageous circumstances. I then 
thought, and still think, that it was right to fight the battle 
of Gettysburg, and I am firmly convinced that, if General 
Lee's plans had been carried out in the spirit in which they 
were conceived, a decisive victoiy would have been obtained, 
which perhaps would have secured our independence. Our 
army was never in better heart, and, when it did retire, it was 
with no sense of defeat. My division brought up the rear 
of the army, and it did not leave the sight of the enemy's 
position until the afternoon of the 5th. One of Meade's 
<}orps followed us most cautiously, at a respectful distance, 
and when, at Fairfield, near the foot of the mountain, I 



THE SOLDIER. 35 

formed line of battle to await it, no advance was made. 
There were none of the indications of defeat in the rear of 
the army on the march, and, when we took position near 
Hagerstown to await Meade's attack, it was with entire con- 
fidence in our ability to meet it with success. 

" Meade's army at Gettysburg numbered at least one 
hundred thousand men in position. The whole force in the 
Department of JSTorthern Yirginia, at the close of May, four 
days before our movement north began, was sixty-eight 
thousand three hundred and fifty-two. No reenforcements 
were received after that time, and, of course, the whole force 
was not carried out of Yirginia. General Lee's army at 
Gettysburg numbered considerably less than sixty thousand 
men of all arms. 

" This campaign did not accomplish all that we desired, 
but, nevertheless, it was not unattended with great and 
advantageous results. It certainly had the effect of deferring, 
for one year at least, the advance on the Confederate capital, 
and had it not been for the fall of Yicksburg at the same 
time, and the consequent severance of all the States beyond 
the Mississippi from the Confederacy, for all practical pur- 
poses, the public would not have taken as gloomy a view of 
the results of the campaign as it did. 

" So far from our army being defeated or broken in spirit, 
when the invading army of the enemy again advanced into 
Yirginia, General Lee intercepted it, and, taking position on 
the south bank of the Eapidan, effectually prevented any 
further advance until May, 1864, when, as I will show you, 
the power of the Confederacy had been so crippled in other 
quarters as to allow an unusual accumulation of men and 
resources against the Army of Northern Yirginia. 

" You must understand that the line of the Rappahannock 
and the Rapidan was the only practicable line of defense in 
I^orthern Yirginia, because the possession and control of the 
Potomac and Chesapeake Bay, which the enemy's monitors 
and ii'on-clads gave him, without let or hinderance, would 



36 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

enable him to flank and turn any line of defense wliicli 
might be assumed north of those rivers. Beyond that line 
General Lee, in 1862, had driven the invading army, and 
there he had retained it up to the time of which I am speak- 
mg. This was all that a defensive policy could accomplish, 
and it was only when he assumed the offensive, as in the 
campaigns of Maryland and Pennsylvania, that the enemy 
could be hurled back on his own border, in order to defend 
his territory and capital. The results of the campaign into 
Pennsylvania left General Lee in possession of his legitimate 
line of defense, with the enemy's plans all thwarted for that 
year. In fact, so satisfied was the latter of his inability to 
accomplish any thing, by an attempt to advance on Richmond, 
that two of Meade's corps were detached for the purpose of 
reenforcing Eosecrans at Chattanooga, and General Lee held 
his own line by such a certain tenure that he was able to 
detach Longstreet's corps, and send two divisions to Bragg, 
and one, first to the south side of James River, and then to 
North Carolina. After Longstreet had gone, occurred the 
movement which caused Meade to retire to Centreville, and 
about the last of November he crossed the Rapidan and 
moved to Mine Run, but retired just in time to avoid an 
attack which General Lee had prepared to make on his flank. 
"At the close of the year 1863 the enemy was no farther 
advanced in his oft-repeated effort to capture the Confederate 
capital, than when Manassas was evacuated, early in the 
spring of 1862; but, in the Southwest, the fall of Yicksburg, 
the disaster of Missionary Ridge, and the failure of the cam- 
paign in Eastern Tennessee, had not only severed the trans- 
Mississippi region from the remainder of the Confederacy, 
but had left all Kentucky and Tennessee firmly in the power 
of the enemy, and rendered all the lower basin of the Mis- 
sissippi practically useless to us. The main army of the West 
had been compelled to retire to Dalton, in the northwestern 
corner of Georgia, and, for all useful purposes, the Confeder- 
acy was confined to Georgia, North and South Carolina, and 



THE SOLDIER. 37 

the portion of Yirginia held bj us. It is time that we held 
posts and had troops in Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi, 
but they could contribute nothing to the general defense, 
and the resources of those States were substantially lost to 
us, at least so far as operations in Yirginia were concerned. 
This state of things left the enemy at liberty to concentrate 
his resources against the two principal armies of the Con- 
federacy. Grant was made commander-in-chief of all the 
armies of the enemy in the spring of 1864, and took his 
position with the Army of the Potomac in the field, while 
Sherman was assigned to the command of the army at Chat- 
tanooga, which was to operate against ours at Dalton. 

" By the 1st of May Grant had accumulated an army of 
more than one hundred and forty-one thousand men on the 
north of the Rapidan; and General Lee's army on the 
south bank, including two of Longstreet's divisions, which 
had returned from Tennessee, was under fifty thousand men 
of all arms. 

" Grant's theory was to accumulate the largest numbers 
practicable against us, so as, by constant 'hammering,' to 
destroy our army 'by mere attrition if in no other way.' 
Besides the army under Grant, in Culpepper, there were near 
fifty thousand men in "Washington and Baltimore, and the 
military control of the raHroads and the telegraph, as well as 
an immense number of steam transports, rendered it an easy 
matter to reenf orce him indefinitely. 

"On the 4:th of May he crossed the Rapidan on our 
right to the Wilderness, to get between us and Richmond. 
General Lee advanced promptly to attack him and thwart 
his purpose ; and then ensued that most wonderful cam- 
paign from the Rapidan to the James, in which the ever- 
glorious Army of ll^orthern Yirginia grappled its gigantic 
antagonist in a death-struggle, which continued until the lat- 
ter was thrown off, crippled and bleeding, to the cover of 
the James and Appomattox Rivers, where it was enabled to 
recruit and renew its strength for another effort. 



38 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" Two days of fierce battle were had in the "Wilderness, 
and our little army never strack more rapid and vigorous 
blows. Grant was compelled to move off from our front, 
and attempt to accomplish his purpose by another flank- 
movement, but General Lee promptly intercepted him at 
Spottsylvania Court-House ; where again occun-ed a series of 
desperate engagements, in which, though a portion of our 
line was temporarily broken, and we sustained a loss which 
we could ill afford, yet Grant's army was so crippled that it 
was unable to resume the offensive until it had been re- 
enforced from "Washington and Baltimore to the full extent 
of forty thousand men. But General Lee received no re- 
enforcements ; and yet Grant, after waiting six days for his, 
when they did arrive, was again compelled to move off from us, 
and attempt another flank-movement, under cover of the net- 
work of difficult water-courses around and east of Spottsyl- 
vania Court-House. Never had the wonderful powers of 
our great chief, and the unflinching courage of his small 
army, been more conspicuously displayed than during the 
thirteen days at this place. One of his three corps command- 
ers had been disabled by wounds at the "Wilderness, and 
another was too sick to command his corps, while he himself 
was suffering from a most annoying and weakening disease. 
In fact, nothing but his own determined will enabled him to 
keep the field at all ; and it was there rendered more mani- 
fest than ever that he was the head and front, the very life 
and soul, of his army. Grant's new movement was again in- 
tercepted at Hanover Junction, and from that point he was 
compelled to retire behind the North Anna and Pamunkey, 
to escape his tenacious adversaiy by another manoeuvre. He 
was again intercepted at Pole Green Church; and at Be- 
thesda Church, and on the historic field of Cold Harbor, oc- 
curred another series of most bloody battles, in which such 
carnage was inflicted on Grant's army that, when orders 
were given for a new assault, his troops in sullen silence de- 
clined to move ; and he was compelled to ask for a truce to 



THE SOLDIER. 39 

bury his dead. Thougli largely reenforced from Butler's 
army, Grant was now compelled to take refuge on the south 
side of James River, at a point to which he could have gone, 
by water, from his camps in Culpepper, without the loss of a 
man. His original plan of the campaign was thus complete- 
ly thwarted, and he was compelled to abandon the attempt to 
take Richmond by the land-route, after a loss in battle of 
more men than were in General Lee's whole ai-my, including 
the reenforcements received at Hanover Junction and Cold 
Harbor, which latter consisted of two divisions, a brigade, 
and less than three thousand men under Breckenridge, from 
the Yalley. When we consider the disparity of the forces 
engaged in this campaign, the advantages of the enemy for 
reenforcing his army, and the time consumed in actual bat- 
tle, it must rank as the most remarkable campaign of ancient 
or modeM tunes. We may read of great victories, settling 
the fate of nations, gained by small armies of compact, well- 
trained, and thoroughly-disciplined troops, over immense and 
unwieldy hordes of untrained barbarians, or of demoralized 
soldiers, sunk in effeminacy and luxury ; but where shall we 
find the history of such a prolonged struggle, in which such 
enonnous advantages of numbers, equipments, resources and 
supplies, were on the side of the defeated party ? The prox- 
imity of a number of water-courses, navigable for steam-ves- 
sels, and patrolled by Federal gunboats, had enabled Grant to 
keep open his communications with the sources of his sup- 
plies, and to receive constant accessions of troops, so that it 
was impossible to destroy his army ; but, if the contest, as in 
most campaigns of former times, had been confined to two 
armies, originally engaged in it, there can be no question but 
that Grant's would have been, in effect, destroyed. As it 
was, his whole movement, after the first encounter in the 
Wilderness, was but a retreat by the flank, the Potomac, the 
Eappahannock, the York and Pamunkey, and the James, in 
succession, furnishing him a new base to retire on, for the re- 
ceipt of supplies and reenforcements, and the resumption of 



40 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

operations. The boldness and fertility of the strategy em- 
ployed by onr glorious chieftain, during this campaign, were 
indeed marvelous ; and such was the disparity of numbers 
that it appears like romance, and men are disposed to tm-n 
an incredulous ear when the truth is told. In fact. General 
Lee himself was aware of the apparent improbability which 
a true statement of the facts would present, and in a letter to 
me, during the winter of 1865-'66, he said : 

" ' It wiU be difficult to get the world to understand the 
odds against which we fought.' 

" Notwithstanding the disparity which existed, he was 
anxious, as I know, to avail himself of every opportunity to 
strike an offensive blow ; and, just as Grant was preparing to 
move across James Eiver with his defeated and dispirited 
army, General Lee was maturing his plans for taking the of- 
fensive ; and, in stating his desire for me to take the initiar 
tive with the corps I then commanded, he said : 

" ' We must destroy this army of Grant's before he gets 
to James Eiver. If he gets there, it wiU become a siege, and 
then it will be a mere question of time.' 

" He knew well that, with the army Grant then had, he 
could not take Richmond, but he also knew that, if that army 
could be placed on the south of the James and east of the 
Appomattox, where it would be out of the reach of ours for 
offensive operations, it could be reenforced indefinitely, until, 
by the process of attrition, the exhaustion of our resources, 
and the employment of mechanism and the improved engines 
of war against them, the brave defenders of our cause would 
gradually melt away. In fact, he knew that it would then 
become a contest between mechanical power and physical 
strength, on the one hand, and the gradually diminishing 
nerve and sinew of Confederate soldiers on the other, until 
the unlimited resources of our enemies must finally prevail 
over aU the genius and chivalric daring which had so long 
baffled their mighty efforts in the field. It was from such 
considerations as these that he had made his great and sue- 



THE SOLDIER. 41 

cessful effort to raise the siege in 1862 ; his subsequent cam- 
paign into Maryland ; and his campaign into Pennsylvania 
in 1863. 

" Before the contemplated blow against Grant was struck, 
the startling intelligence of Hunter's operations in the Yalley 
was received, and it became necessary to detach, first Breck- 
enridge's command, and then my corps, to meet the new dan- 
ger threatening all of our communications. 

" This enabled Grant to reach his new position umnolested, 
the movement toward which began on the night I received 
my orders to move by three o'clock next mormng for the 
Valley. Finding it necessary to detach my command on a 
work of pressing urgency. General Lee determined to com- 
bine with the movement a daring expedition across the Poto- 
mac, to threaten the enemy's country and capital ; about the 
conduct and results of which I will merely say that there 
has been much misunderstanding and ignorant misrepresen- 
tation. After reaching the south bank of the James, Grant 
made a dash for the purpose of captming Petersburg, which 
was thwarted by the good soldier who had already baffled 
and defeated Butler. The enemy, now having found it im- 
possible to capture the Confederate capital in a campaign by 
land, resorted to a combined operation of his army and navy, 
by the way of the James. The condition of things in the 
South and Southwest enabled him to still further strengthen 
Grant's army after its junction with Butler's ; and the fall 
of Atlanta, in September, severed the greater part of Georgia 
practically from the Confederacy. There were no means of re- 
cruiting General Lee's army, to any considerable extent, after 
its union with Beauregard's small force, which, with the di- 
vision and brigade of the Army of Northern Yirgina returned 
at Hanover Junction, and the division received at Cold Har- 
bor, did not reach twenty thousand men, while my corps had 
been detached. For nine long months was the unequal con- 
test protracted by the genius of one man, aided by the valor 
of his little force, occupying a line of more than thirty miles, 



42 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

witli scarcely more tlian a respectable skirmish-line. During 
this time, there were many daring achievements and heroic 
deeds performed by the constantly-diminishing survivors of 
those who had rendered the Army of Northern Virginia so 
illustrious ; but, finally, constant attrition and lingering starv- 
ation did their work. General Lee had been unable to attack 
Grant in his stronghold, south of the James and east of the Ap- 
pomattox, where alone such a movement was practicable, be- 
cause a concentration for that purpose, on the east of the lat- 
ter river, would have left the way to Richmond open to the 
enemy. When, by the unsuccessful expedition into Tennes- 
see, the march of Sherman through the centre of Georgia to 
the Atlantic, his subsequent expedition north through South 
Carolina into North Carolina, and the consequent fall of 
Charleston and Wilmington, the Confederacy had been prac- 
tically reduced to Richmond City, the remnant of the Army of 
Northern Yirginia, and the very narrow slips of country bor- 
dering on the three railroads and the canal running out of 
that city into the Yalley, Southwestern Yirginia, and North 
Carolina, the struggle in Yirginia, maintained so long by the 
consummate ability of our leader, began to draw to a close. 
To add to his embarrassments, he had been compelled to detach 
a large portion of his cavalry to the aid of the troops falling 
back before Shennan in his march northward, and a portion 
of his infantry to the defense of Wilmington ; and at the 
close of March, 1865, Sherman had approached as far north 
as Goldsborough, North Carolina, on his movement to unite 
with Grant. 

" It was not till then that Grant, to whose aid an immense 
force of superbly-equipped cavalry had swept down from the 
Yalley, was able to turn General Lee's flank and break his at- 
tenuated line. The retreat from the lines of Richmond and 
Petersburg began in the early days of April, and the remnant 
of the Army of Northern Yirginia fell back for more than one 
hundred miles, before its overpowering antagonist, repeatedly 
presenting front to the latter, and giving battle so as to check 



THE SOLDIER. 43 

its progress. Finally, from mere exhaustion, less than eight 
thousand men, with arms in their hands, of the noblest army 
that had ever fought ' in the tide of times,' were surrendered 
at Appomattox to an army of one hundred and fifty thousand 
men ; the sword of Kobert E. Lee, without a blemish on it, 
was sheathed forever ; and the flag, to which he had added 
such lustre, was furled, to be henceforth embalmed in the 
affectionate remembrance of those who had remained faithful 
during all our trials, and will do so to the end. 

" Who is it that stands out the grandest figure in that last 
sad scene of the drama ? Is it the victor ? Yictor over what ? 
Can it be possible that any adherent to the cause of our 
enemies can recur to that scene at Appomattox Court-House 
without blushing ? On that occasion, the vast superiority of 
the Confederate commander over his antagonist, in all the 
qualities of a great captain, and of the Confederate soldier 
over the Northern, was made most manifest to the dullest 
comprehension ; and none were made more sensible of it than 
our adversaries. General Lee had not been conquered in bat- 
tle, but surrendered because he had no longer an army with 
which to give battle. "What he surrendered was the skeleton, 
the mere ghost of the Army of Northern Yirgina, which had 
been gradually worn down by the combined agencies of num- 
bers, steam-power, railroads, mechanism, and all the resoiu-ces 
of physical science. It had, in fact, been engaged in a strug- 
gle, not only against the mere brute power of man, but 
against all the elements of fire, air, earth, and water ; and 
even that all-pervading and subtile fluid, whose visible demon- 
strations the ancients designated 'the thunder-bolt of the 
gods,' had been led submissive in the path of the opposing 
army, so as to concentrate with rapidity and make available 
all the other agencies. 

" It was by the use of these new adjuncts to the science 
of war, that McClellan and Pope had escaped destruction in 
1862; the Federal capital been saved, after the terrible chas- 
tisement inflicted on their armies ; Pennsylvania also saved 



44 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

in 1863, and Meade enabled to fight a drawn battle at Gettys- 
burg ; Grant's army preserved from anniliilation in 1864, and 
enabled to reach the welcome shelter of the James and Appo- 
mattox ; and now, they had finally produced that exhaustion 
of our army and resources, and that accumulation of numbers 
on the other side, which wi'ought the final disaster. 

" When we come to estimate General Lee's achievements 
and abilities as a military commander, all these things must 
be taken into consideration. 

" I have now given you a condensed sketch of General 
Lee's military career, and I am aware that what I have said 
falls short of the real merits of the subject. My estimates of 
the enemy's strength are taken from their own reports and 
statements. In the last interview I had with General Lee, 
since my return to the country, I mentioned to him my esti- 
mates of his strength at various times, and he said that they 
fully covered his force at all times, and in some instances 
were in excess. They are those I have now given you. 

" From the facts I have presented, I thiak you will have 
no difficulty in discerning that the fall of Richmond, and the 
surrender of the Army of Northern Yirginia, were the conse- 
quences of events in the West and Southwest, and not dii*ect- 
ly of the operations in Yirginia. I say this, without intend- 
ing to cast any reproach, directly or by implication, on the 
commanders or the rank and file of our armies operating in 
those quarters. For them I have a profound respect and 
admiration, and I am ever ready to receive and acknowledge 
them as worthy coadjutors and comrades of the Army of 
Northern Yirginia. They had, also, the disadvantage of 
overwhelming numbers, and the other agencies I have men- 
tioned, to contend against, and a truthful history of their 
deeds wiU confer upon them imperishable renown. I do not 
feel that it is necessary or just to attempt to build up the 
reputation of the Army of Northern Yirgmia or its com- 
mander, at the expense of our comrades who battled so 
gloriously and vigorously on other fields for the same just 



THE SOLDIER. 45 

and holy cause. "What I have said is not mentioned with 
any such purpose, "but simply to note what I conceive to be 
an apparent and indisputable historic fact, that ought not to 
be overlooked in a review of General Lee's military record. 

" At the close of the war, the deportment and conduct of 
our noble and honored leader were worthy of his previous 
history ; and in that dignified and useful retirement to which 
he devoted the remainder of his days, in your midst, the true 
grandeur of his soul shone out as conspicuously as had his 
transcendent military genius in his campaigns ; but I leave 
the duty of illustrating that to others. 

" There have been efforts to draw parallels between our 
illustrious chief and some of the renowned commanders of 
former times, but these efforts have always proved unsatis- 
factory to me. 

" Where shall we tm^n to find the peer of our great and 
pure soldier and hero? Certainly, we shall not find one 
among the mythic heroes of Homer, the wrath of the chief 

of whom was — 

' .... to Greece tlie direful spring 
Of woes Tinnumbered . . . . ' 

"ISTor shall we find one among the Grecian commanders 
of a later period, though in the devotion of the hero of Ther- 
mopylae, and the daring of the victor of Marathon, may be 
found similes for the hke qualities in our hero. But there is 
too much of fable and the license of the heroic verse, in the 
narrations of their deeds, to make them reliable. 

" Shall we take Alexander, who, at the head of his serried 
phalanxes, encountered the effeminate masses of Asia and 
scattered them like sheep before a ravening wolf? While 
sighing for new worlds to conquer, he could not control him- 
self, but fell a victim to his own excesses. 

"In the march of Hannibal, the great Carthaginian 
patriot and hero, over the Alps, and his campaigns in Italy, 
we might find a similarity to General Lee's bold strategy, 
but the system of warfare in those days, the implements of 



46 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

war, and tlie mode of maintaining armies in tlie field, wMch 
had neither baggage nor supply-trains, but foraged on the 
country in wbicb they operated, make such a vast difference, 
that the parallel ceases at the very beginning. Besides, 
Carthage and Rome 'were then nearly equal in power, and 
Hannibal was enabled to receive reenf orcements from Car- 
thage by sea, as the Carthaginians were a great maritime 
people ; and the hostile neighbors to Eome readily furnished 
him with allies and auxiliaries. 

" We will not find in republican Home a parallel. Cer- 
tainly not in Julius Csesar, the greatest of Koman generals, 
who, at the head of the legions of ' the mistress of the world,' 
overran the countries of barbarians, and then turned his 
sword against the hberties of his country. 

" "We shall search in vain for one among the generals of 
the Roman Empire, either before or after its partition ; nor 
shall we find one among the leaders of the barbaric hordes 
which overran the territories of the degenerate Romans ; nor 
in the dark ages ; nor among the Crusaders, who, under the 
standard of the Cross, committed such crimes against religion 
and humanity ; nor among the chieftains of the middle ages, 
to advance whose ambitious projects the nations of Europe 
were, by turns, torn and ravaged. 

" Perhaps, in the champion of Protestantism, from the 
ISTorth of Europe, Gustavus Adolphus, there might be found 
no unworthy parallel for ^ur great leader, as well in regard 
to purity and unselfishness of character, as heroic courage 
and devotion, and the comparison has not inaptly been 
drawn ; but the career of the heroic King of Sweden was cut 
short by death in battle, at so early a period, and before he 
had stood the test of adversity, that the materials for com- 
pleting the parallel are wanting. 

" Some have undertaken to draw the parallel between our 
pure chieftain and Marlborough, who owed his rise, in the 
first place, to the dishonor of his family, and the patronage 
of a debauched court favorite. I utterly repudiate that com- 



THE SOLDIER. . 47 

parison. Besides, Marlborough commanded tlie aiTaies of 
the greatest maritime power in the world, in alliance with all 
the rest of Europe, against France alone. Shall we compare 
General Lee to the great Napoleon, or his successful antag- 
onist, Wellington ? Napoleon was a captain of most extra- 
ordinar}^ genius, but success was always necessary to him. 
As long as he had what Forest, with such terse vigor, if in- 
elegance, would call ' the bulge,' he did wondrously, but he 
could never stand reverses ; and the disastrous retreat from 
Moscow, and the shameful flight from Waterloo, must always 
be blots on his military escutcheon. He would have been 
unable to conduct the campaigns of General Lee against the 
constantly-accumulating and ever-renewing armies of the 
enemy, and none of his own campaigns were at all similar to 
them. He played a bold game for empire and self-aggran- 
dizement, regardless of the lives, liberties, or happiness of 
others, and the first adverse turn of the wheel of fortune 
ruined him. ' The Hundred Days ' constituted but the last 
desperate effort of a ruined gambler. 

" Wellington was a prudent, good soldier, at the head of 
the armies of a most powerful nation, 'the mistress of the 
seas,' in alliance with all Europe against Napoleon in his 
waning days. He was emphatically a favorite child of For- 
tune, and won his chief glory in a game against the desperate 
gambler whose last stake was up, when he had all the odds 
on his side. 'The L'on Duke,' though almost worshiped 
and overwhelmed with honors and riches by the British 
nation, does not furnish a suitable parallel for the great Con- 
federate commander. 

" In regard to all I have mentioned, and all other re- 
nowned military chieftains of other days, in the Old World, it 
must be recollected that they did not have to contend against 
the new elements in the art of war which were brought to 
bear against our armies and their commanders. 

" Coming now to this side of the water, we may draw a 
parallel between General Lee and our great Washington in 



48 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

many respects; for, in their great seK-command, in their 
patriotism, and in their purity and unselfishness of character, 
there was a great similarity ; but the military operations of 
General Lee were on so much grander a scale than those of 
Washington, and the physical changes in the character of the 
country, wrought by the adaptation of steam-power, and the 
invention of railroads and the telegraph, were so great, that 
there cease to be any further points of comparison between 
them as soldiers. It was the physical difliculty of penetrat- 
ing the country, backed by the material aid, in men, money, 
and ships-of-war, of a powerful European nation, which 
enabled the States to win their independence under Wash- 
ington; while the facilities for rapid communication and 
concentration, in connection with the aid received by our 
enemies, in men and money, from all Europe, which was a 
recruiting-ground for them, caused our disasters and lost us 
our liberties, in a contest in which we stood alone. 

" There is no occasion to draw a parallel between General 
Lee and our dead heroes, Sidney Johnston and Jackson. 
The career of the former, whose dawn gave such bright prom- 
ise, was, unfortunately, cut off so soon, that the country at 
large did not have an opportunity of learning all of which 
those who knew him believed him to be capable. 

"Whoever shall undertake to draw a parallel between 
General Lee and his great Lieutenant, for the purpose of 
depreciating the one or the other, cannot have formed the 
remotest conception of the true character of either of those 
illustrious men, and congenial Christian heroes. Let us be 
thankful that our cause had two such champions, and that, 
in their characters, we can furnish the world at large with 
the best assurance of the rightfulness of the principles for 
which they and we fought. When asked for our vindication, 
we can triumphantly point to the graves of Lee and Jackson 
and look the world squarely in the face. Let them, the 
descendant of the Cavalier from tide-water, and the scion of 
the Scotch-L'ish stock from the mountains of Northwestern 



THE SOLDIER. 49 

Virginia, lie here, in tliis middle ground, and let their 
memories be cherished and mingled together in that har- 
mony which characterized them during their glorious com- 
panionship in arms. 

" Nor would it be at all profitable to institute a compari- 
son between General Lee and any of our living commanders. 
Let us be rejoiced that those still survive who were worthy 
defenders of our cause, and not unfit comrades of Lee, Sidney 
Johnston, and Stonewall Jackson. 

" Shall I compare General Lee to his successful antago- 
nist ? As well compare the great pyramid, which rears its 
majestic proportions in the valley of the Nile, to a pigmy 
perched on Mount Atlas. 

" No, my friends, it is a vain work for us to seek any- 
where for a parallel to the great character which has won our 
admiration and love. Our beloved chief stands, like some 
lofty column which rears its head among the highest, in 
grandeur, simple, pure and sublime, needing no borrowed 
lustre ; and he is all our own." . . . 

The gallant and accomplished General John B. Gordon, 
of Georgia, who developed such military genius as to place 
him in the very fore-front of the soldiers of mark during the 
war, thus speaks of General Lee as a soldier : 

" But, as one of the great captains of the world, he will 
first pass review and inspection before the criticism of his- 
tory. "We will not compare him with Washington. The 
mind revolts instinctively at the comparison and competition 
of two such men, so equally and gloriously great. But with 
modest, yet calm and unflinching confidence, we place him 
by the side of the Marlboroughs and Wellingtons, who fill 
Buch high niches in the Pantheon of immortality. 

" Let us dwell for a moment, my friends, on this thought. 
Marlborough never met defeat, it is true. Victory, marked 
eveiy step of his triumphant march, but when, where, and 
whom, did Marlborough fight ? The ambitious and vain but 
able Louis XIV. had ah*eady exhausted the resources of his 
4 



50 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

kingdom before Marlborough stepped upon the stage. The 
great Marshals Turenne and Conde were no more, and Lux- 
emburg, we beheve, had vanished from the scene. Marlbor- 
ough, preeminently great, as he certainly was, nevertheless 
led the combined forces of England and of Holland, in the 
freshness of their strength, and the fullness of their financial 
ability, against prostrate France, with a treasury depleted, a 
people worn out, discouraged, and dejected. 

" But let us turn to another comparison. The great Yon 
Moltke, who now ' rides upon the whirlwind and commands 
the storm ' of Prussian invasion, has recently declared that 
General Lee, in all respects, was fully the equal of Welling- 
ton, and you may the better appreciate this admission, when 
you remember that Wellington was the benefactor of Prus- 
sia, and probably Yon Moltke's special idol. But let us ex- 
amine the arguments ourselves. France was already pros- 
trate when Wellington met ISTapoleon. That great emper- 
or had seemed to make war upon the very elements them- 
selves, to have contended with N^ature, and to have almost 
defied Providence. The l^emesis of the North, more savage 
than Goth or Yandal, mounting the swift gales of a Russian 
winter, had carried death, desolation, and ruin, to the veiy 
gates of Paris. Wellington fought, at Waterloo, a bleeding 
and broken nation — a nation electrified, it is true, to almost 
superhuman energy, by the genius of Kapoleon ; but a na- 
tion prostrate and bleeding, nevertheless. Compare this, my 
friends, the condition of France, with the condition of the 
United States, in the freshness of her strength, in the luxuri- 
ance of her resources, in the lustihood of her gigantic youth, 
and tell me where belongs the chaplet of military superiority, 
with Lee or with Marlborough or Wellington? Even that 
greatest of captains, in his Italian campaigns, flashing his 
fame, in hghtning splendor, over the world, even Bonaparte 
met and crashed in battle but three or four (I think) Aus- 
trian armies ; while our Lee, with one army, badly equipped, 
.and in time incredibly short, met and hurled back, in broken 



THE SOLDIER. 5I 

and shattered fragments, five admirably prepared and most 
magnificently appointed invasions. Yes, more, lie discrowned, 
in rapid succession, one after another of the United States' 
most accomplished and admirable commanders. 

" Lee was never really beaten, Lee could not be beaten ! 
Overpowered, foiled in his efforts, he might be, but never 
defeated until the props which supported him gave way. 
Never until the platform sank beneath him, did any enemy 
ever dare pursue. On that most melancholy of pages, the 
do-wnfall of the Confederacy, no Leipsic, no "Waterloo, no 
Sedan, can ever be recorded." 

Colonel Charles S. Tenable, of General Lee's staff, made 
in Eichmond, on the 30th of October, 1873, an address be- 
fore the " Association of the Anny of Northern Yii-ginia," 
in which he gave a sketch of the campaign from the "Wilder- 
ness to Petersburg. His summing up was as follows : 

" On the ttth of May, four radiating invading columns 
set out simultaneously for the conquest of "Virginia. The 
old State, which had for three years known little else save the 
tramp of armed legions, was now to be closed in by a circle 
of fire, from the mountains to the seaboard. 

" Through the southwestern mountain-passes ; through the 
gates of the lower Yalley ; from the battle-scarred vales of 
the Eappahannock ; from the Atlantic seaboard to the waters 
of the James, came the senied hosts on field and fiood, num- 
bering more than two hundred and seventy-five thousand 
men (including in this number also reenf orcements sent dur- 
ing the campaign). jSTo troops were ever more thoroughly 
equipped, or supplied with a more abundant commissariat. 
For the heaviest column transports were ready to bring sup- 
plies and reenforcements to any one of three convenient 
deep-water bases — Aquia Creek, Port Poyal, and the "WTiite 
House. 

" The column next in importance had its deep-water base 
within nine miles of a vital point in our defenses. In the 
cavalry arm (so important in a campaign in a country like 



52 KEMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

ours) they boasted overwiielming strengtli. The Conieder- 
ate forces in Yirginia, or which could be drawn to its defense 
from other points, numbered not more than seventy-five 
thousand men. Yet our great commander with steadfast 
heart, committing our cause to the Lord of battles, calmly 
made his disposition to meet the shock of the invading hosts. 
In sixty days the great invasion had dwindled to a siege of 
Petersburg (miles from deep water) by the main column, 
which, ' shaken in its structure, its valor quenched in blood, 
and thousands of its ablest officers killed or wounded, was 
the Army of the Potomac no more.' 

" Mingled with it in the lines of Petersburg lay the men of 
the second column, which for the last forty days of the cam- 
paign had been held in inglorious inaction at Bermuda Hun- 
dreds by Beauregard, except when a portion of it was sent to 
share the defeat of June 3d on the Chickahominy, while the 
thu'd and fourth columns, foiled at Lynchburg, were wan- 
dering in disorderly retreat through the mountaias of West 
Virginia, entirely out of the area of military operations. 

" Lee had made his works at Petersburg impregnable to 
assault, and had a movable column of his army within two 
days' march of the Federal capital. He had made a campaign 
unexampled in the history of defensive warfare." 

Colonel Venable thus concluded his address on this occa- 
sion : 

" My comrades, I feel that I have given but a feeble pict- 
ure of this grand period in the history of this time of trial 
of our beloved South — a history which is a great gift of God, 
and which we must hand down as a holy heritage to our 
children, not to teach them to cherish a spirit of bitterness or 
a love for war, but to show them that their fathers bore 
themselves worthily in the strife when to do battle became a 
sacred duty. Heroic history is the living soul of a nation's 
renown. When the traveler in Switzerland beholds the 
monument to the thirteen hundred brave mountaineers who 
met the overwhelming hosts of their proud invaders, and as 



THE SOLDIER. 53 

he reads in tlieir epitaph, ' who fell unconquered, but wearied 
with victory, giving their souls to God and theii* bodies to 
the enemy ; ' or when he visits the places sacred to the 
m)i;h of "William Tell, transplanted by pious, patriotic friends 
from the legends of another people to inspire the youth jDf that 
mountain-land with a hatred of tyrants and a love of heroic 
deeds ; or when he contemplates that wonderful monument 
by Thorwaldsen on the shores of Lake Lucerne in com- 
memoration of the fidelity in death of the Swiss Guard of 
Louis XVI. — a colossal lion, cut out of the living rock, 
pierced by a fatal javehn, and yet in death protecting the 
lily of France with his paw — he asks himself, how many men 
of the nations of the world have been inspired with a love 
of freedom by the monuments and heroic stories of little 
Switzerland ? 

" Comrades, we need not weave any fable borrowed from 
Scandinavian lore into the woof of our history to inspire our 
youth with admiration of glorious deeds in freedom's battles 
done. In the true history of this Army of I^orthern Virgin- 
ia, which laid down its arms not conquered, but wearied with 
victoiy, you have a record of deeds of valor, of unselfish con- 
secration to duty, and faithfulness in death, which will teach 
our sons and our sons' sons how to die for liberty. Let us 
see to it that it shall be transmitted to them." 

In an address before the " Society of Confederate Sol- 
diers and Sailors," in Baltimore, October 12, 1871, that ac- 
complished soldier. General Wade Hampton, of South Caro- 
lina, thus sums up the result of the compaign of 1862 : 

" Thus it will be seen that Lee, in the short space of two 
months, with a force at no time exceeding seventy-five thou- 
sand (76,000) men, defeated in repeated engagements two 
Federal armies, each of which was not less than one hundred 
and twenty thousand (120,000) strong, relieved the Southern 
capital from danger, and even threatened that of the North. 
But the campaign, great as it had been, was not to end here. 
Throwing his army into Maryland, Lee swept down from 



54 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

that State on Harper's Ferry, capturing it, with its garrison 
of eleven thousand (11,000) men, and seventy-two (Y2) guns ; 
and then again concentrating his troops on the north of the 
Potomac, he fought the brilhant and bloody battle of Sharps- 
burg. In this great fight — for great it was, though tlie 
Southern arms failed to gain so decisive a victory as had so 
generally attended them — Lee, with only thirty-seven thou- 
sand (37,000) men, repulsed every attack of the enemy, who 
brought into the field an army three times as strong as his 
own. Is this not glory enough for one campaign, for one 
army — for one man ? Yet the story of these great deeds is 
scarcely begun^the glory not yet at its zenith. Before even 
this campaign ended, ' Fredericksburg ' was to be inscribed 
on those Southern banners which were already so covered 
by names of victories as scarcely to leave room for another." 

After quoting the simple but beautiful orders in which 
General Lee announced to his troops the results of this cam- 
paign, General Hampton continues : 

" These words, brief and simple as they are, record deeds 
rarely equaled. What was accomplished by Lee in the brief 
period embraced in this order will be more readily compre- 
hended by giving the actual results of the campaign. These 
were, besides a series of brilliant victories to the Confederate 
arms, losses to the enemy of seventy-five thousand (75,000) 
men, one hundred and fifty-four (154) pieces of artillery, and 
seventy thousand (70,000) small-arms. If to this list, so 
glorious to the Army of ISTorthem Yirginia, be added the 
Federal loss in the battle of Fredericksburg, we shall have 
the enormous number of eighty-seven thousand five hundred 
(87,500) men killed, wounded, and captured by this army 
in one short campaign." 

General Hampton then shows the superiority of Lee's 
generalship, in an able sketch of his subsequent campaigns, 
and makes the following comparison between him and his 
finally successful antagonist : 

" What did Lee effect with the Army of Northern Virginia ? 



THE SOLDIER. 55 

"In the thi'ee years he commanded that army, he in- 
flicted a loss on the enemy of not less, and perhaps more, 
than three hundred thousand (300,000) men, besides taking 
gnns 'and small-arms almost beyond computation. In his 
last campaign, with a force at no time exceeding forty-five 
thousand (45,000), and often far less than that number, he 
destroyed one hundred and twenty thousand (120,000) of the 
enemy, and he held for nine months a weak hne against an 
army quadruple his own. These are, in brief, the actual, 
palpable, enduring results of his generalship. 

" "What did Grant effect during those same eleven months 
of carnage embraced in the last campaign, to prove his gener- 
alship) ? He began his movement with upward of one hun- 
dred and forty thousand (140,000) men, and he was able, on 
account of his great resources, to keep his army up to this 
number, at least, to the close. In the first month of the cam- 
paign his loss was so heavy that, had his dead and wounded 
been placed touching each other, they would literally have 
formed one long, continuous, goiy line from the Wilderness 
to Cold Harbor ! They at least had fought it out ' on that 
line.' In the whole campaign he lost not less than one hun- 
dred and twenty thousand (120,000) men, and he finally, by 
mere weight of numbers — ^for his generalship could never 
have accomplished this — overwhelmed his antagonist. But 
in order to bring this question down to narrower limits, let 
us suppose that the relative numbers and positions of the op- 
posing armies had been reversed, and that Grant, with thirty- 
five thousand (35,000) men, had occupied a line forty miles 
long, while Lee confronted him with one hundred and forty 
thousand (140,000) Southern troops : can any imagination, 
however wild, stretch so far as to conceive that he could 
have held that hne for nine months? The proposition is 
too absurd for senous consideration. He would not have 
held it for one month, not for one day, no, not for one 
hour!" 

Want of space compels the omission of the testimony of 



56 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

others of tlie ablest soldiers of the Confederate army. Suf- 
fice it to say, that they all concur in the opinion which Stone- 
wall Jackson once expressed : " General Lee is a j>henome- 
non. He is the only mom, whom I would he willing to follow 
. hlindfold.^^ 

Indeed, it has been rarely the fortune of a military chief- 
tain to inspire his subordinates with such implicit confidence 
in his ability ; and Lee's soldiers thought that he could ac- 
complish any thing which his judgment would allow him to 
undertake. 

Equally decided were the opinions of civilians who were 
in position to fully appreciate his merits. The able soldier- 
statesmen who presided over the fortunes of the Confeder- 
acy, the Cabinet, the Congress, the press, and the people, 
were welhiigh unanimous in pronouncing on his unrivaled 
merits. 

John Mitchell, the Irish patriot, thus wrote of him in the 
New York Citizen: 

" The highest head, the noblest and grandest character of 
our continent, the most conscientious, humane, and faithful 
soldier, the most chivalrous gentleman in this world, the 
best, the most superb sample of the American warrior, has 
fallen like a mighty tree in the forest ; and men wonder, 
after the first shock of the news, to find that there is such a 
gap, such a blank in the world. 

" What is there wanting to the fame of this illustrious 
American ? " 

One other extract from the countless expressions of his 
friends is subjoined. An able writer in the Southern Re- 
mew makes the following comparison between the achieve- 
ments of Lee and WeUington : " As compared with those of 
General Lee, they seem, including even Waterloo, absolutely 
insignificant. General Lee, with a force not so large as the 
Anglo-Portuguese regular army, which Wellington had un- 
der him when he encountered Massena in 1809 — not haK so 
large as his whole force, if the Portuguese militia be taken 



THE SOLDIER. 57 

into the account — in the space of twenty-eight days, in three 
battles, killed and wounded more men than "Wellington ever 
killed and wounded during his whole career from Assaye to 
"Waterloo, both inclusive. In one of these battles he killed 
and wounded more men by nine thousand (9,000) than the 
French army lost, including prisoners, in the whole cam- 
paign of "Waterloo, and the pursuit to the gates of Paris. 
In the same battle he killed and wounded more men than 
"Wellington, Blucher, and Napoleon, all three together, lost 
in IdUed and wounded in the battle of "Waterloo, by five thou- 
sand (5,000) men. In the second of these battles he killed 
and wounded the same number that both the opposing annies 
lost in the battle of "Waterloo ; and in the third he killed and 
wounded more men, by seven thousand (Y,000), than the 
French alone lost in the battle of "Waterloo. In the three 
battles together, Lee kiUed and wounded more men, by at 
least thirty thousand (30,000), than the allies and the French 
lost in the whole campaign, including prisoners. The force 
with which Lee operated never amounted at one time to fif- 
ty thousand (50,000) men ; the force with which "Welling- 
ton and Blucher acted was, even according to English esti- 
mates, one hundred and ninety thousand (190,000) strong. 
The force to which Lee was opposed was from first to last 
two hundred and forty thousand (240,000) strong ; the force 
to which "Wellington and Blucher were opposed was but one 
hundred and twenty-two thousand (122,000) strong. "When 
Massena invaded Portugal, in 1810, "Wellington had thirty 
thousand (30,000) British troops and twenty-five thousand 
(25,000) Portuguese regulars, who, in the battle of Busaco, 
according to Wellington's own account, ' proved themselves 
worthy to fight side by side with the British veterans ; ' be- 
sides forty thousand (40,000) admirable Portuguese militia. 
He had Lisbon for his base, with a British war-fleet riding 
at anchor, and innimaerable vessels of other descriptions ply- 
ing between the port and England, and bringing the most 
abundant supphes of arms, provisions, and munitions of war. 



58 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

He had surrounded tlie port with the most tremendous sys- 
tem of fortifications known in modern times, and his task 
was to defend the strongest country in Europe. In Lee's 
case the enemy had possession of the sea, and could and did 
land a powerful army to attack the very basis of his opera- 
tions, while he was fighting another of still greater strength 
in front. It is probably not altogether just to Wellington 
to institute this comparison. If his deeds look but common- 
place beside the achievements of this campaign, so do all 
others. The history of the world cannot exhibit such a cam- 
paign as that of Lee in 1864." 

If it be objected that the opinions above cited are those 
of too partial friends, the ready reply is to quote from those 
who adhered to the North in the great struggle. 

In an address at Louisville, Kentucky, General Preston 
thus gives the opinion of General Winfield Scott of his 
favorite officer : 

" I remember when General Lee was appointed lieuten- 
ant-colonel, at the same time when Sidney Johnston was ap- 
pointed colonel, and General Scott thought that Lee should 
have been colonel. I was talking with General Scott on 
the subject long before the late struggle between the North 
and South took place, and he then said that Lee was the 
greatest living soldier in America. He didn't object to the 
other commission, but he thought Lee should be first pro- 
moted. Finally, he said to me, with emphasis, what you 
will pardon me for relating : ^ I tell you that if I were on my 
deathrhed to-morrow^ and the President of tlie United States 
should tell me that a great hattle was to he fought for the lib- 
erty or slavery of the country^ and asked my judgment as to 
the ahility of a commander^ I would say with my dying 
hreath, Let it he Robert E. Lee^ " 

In his address at a memorial meeting in Baltimore, Hon. 
Reverdy Johnson bore the following testimony : 

" It was his good fortune to know him many years since, 
before the Mexican "War, immediately preceding the great 



THE SOLDIER. 59 

struggle, and after it. The conduct of General Lee at every 
period was every thing that could command the respect, ad- 
miration, and love of man. He (Mr. Johnson) had been in- 
timate with the late General Scott, commander of the Army 
of Mexico, and served with him as a quasi-'proiesaional adviser 
in Washington, and he had heard General Scott more than 
once say that his success was largely due to the skill, valor, 
and undaunted energy of Robert E. Lee. It was a theme 
upon which he (General Scott) liked to converse, and he stated 
his pui-pose to recommend him as his successor in the chief 
command of the army. 

" He (Mr. Johnson) was with General Scott in April, 1861, 
when he received the resignation of General Lee, and wit- 
nessed the pain it caused him. It was a sad blow to the suc- 
cess of that war, in which his own sword had as yet been un- 
sheathed. Much as General Scott regretted it, he never failed 
to say that he was convinced that Lee had taken that step 
from an imperative sense of duty. General Scott was con- 
soled in a great measure by the reflection that he would have 
as his opponent a soldier worthy of every man's esteem, and 
one who would conduct the war upon the strictest rules of 
civilized warfare. There would be no outrages committed 
upon private persons or private property which he could pre- 
vent. . . . 

" Robert E. Lee is worthy of all praise. As a man, he 
was peerless among men. As a soldier, he had no superior 
and no equal. As a humane and Christian soldier, he towers 
high in the political horizon. He remembered with what de- 
light, while he was the representative of the country at the 
court of Great Britain, he heard the praises of General Lee's 
character and fame from eminent soldiers and statesmen of 
that country. The occasion does not require any comparisons 
that were made between the generals of the North and Lee 
by the public opinion of England. There was not one of 
them who was the superior of Robert E. Lee. It was not 
only the skill with which he planned his campaigns, it was 



GO REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

the humane manner in which he carried them out. He heard 
the praises which were bestowed upon Lee's order of June 
26, 1863, issued in Pennsylvania, to his army, in which he 
told his men not to forget that the honor of the army required 
them to observe the same humanity in the country of the 
enemy as in their own." 

As confirmatory of the statements of General Scott's 
opinion of Lee, I give in full the following letter : 

" Headquarters of the Army, May 8, 1857. 
" Hon. J. B. Floyd, Secretary of War. 

" Sir: I beg to ask that one of the vacant second-lieutenant- 
cies may be given to W. H. F. Lee, son of Brevet-Colonel R. E. 
Lee, at present on duty against the Comanches. 

" I make this application mainly on the extraordinary merits 
of the father — the very best soldier that lever saw in thejield — 
but the son is himself a very remarkable youth, now about 
twenty, of a fine stature and constitution, a good linguist, a 
good mathematician, and about to graduate at Harvard Univer- 
sity. He is also honorable, and amiable like his father, and dy- 
ing to enter the army. I do not ask this commission as a favor, 
though if I had influence I should be happy to exert it in this 
case. My application is in the name of national justice, in part 
payment (and but a small part) of the debt due to the invalu- 
able services of Colonel Lee. 

" I have the honor to be, with high respect, 

" Your obedient servant, 

" Wlnpield Scott." 

Rev. Dr. Brantley stated, in a memorial discourse at At- 
lanta, that in a conversation with him General George Meade, 
of the United States Army, had stated as his very emphatic 
opinion that Lee was " by far the ablest Confederate general 
which the war produced." 

In an editorial upon his death the New York World said : 
"Every man is to be judged, so far as human judgment 
may be passed upon him at all, by the tenor of the motives to 
which the main current of bis da^^s has responded. Judged 



THE SOLDIER. 61 

by this standard, the career of Robert E. Lee must command 
the deliberate admiration even of those who most earnestly 
condemn the course upon which he decided in the most solemn 
and hnperative crisis of his life. Of his genius as a military 
commander we do not speak. To that the unanimous voice 
of all the true and gallant men who fought our long battle 
out with him and his untiring army has borne abundant wit- 
ness. The events which evoked it are still too near to us, too 
many melancholy memories still cluster about the names of 
those prodigious battle-fields of Virginia, to make it natural 
or possible for a Northern pen to dwell with complacency 
upon the strategic resources, the inexhaustible patience, the 
calm detemiination, of our most illustrious antagonist. But 
if the testimony of all honorable men who contended against 
the great Southern general agrees with the verdict of all com- 
petent foreign critics in awarding to him a place among the 
most eminent soldiers of history, the concord is not less 
absolute of all who knew the man in the private and personal 
aspects of his hfe, as to his gentleness, his love of justice, his 
truth, and his elevation of soul." 

The New Yorh Sun, edited by Charles A. Dana — Mr. 
Lincoln's Assistant Secretary of War — thus concludes its no- 
tice: 

" His death will awaken most profound and honest mani- 
festations of grief throughout the entire South, and very many 
people in the North will forget political differences beside the 
open gi-ave of the dead chieftain, and drop a tear of sorrow 
on his bier. And whatever may be the verdict as to his ca- 
reer in public life, the universal expression will be that in 
General Lee an able soldier, a sincere Christian, and an honest 
man, has been taken from earth." 

The New York Herald thus announced his death : 

" On a quiet autumn morning, in the land which he loved 
80 well, and, as he* held, served so faithfully, the spirit of 
Robert Edward Lee left the clay which it had so much en- 
nobled, and traveled out of this world into the great and 



62 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

mysterious land. The expressions of regret which sprang 
from the few who surrounded the bedside of the dying sol- 
dier and Christian, on yesterday, will be swelled to-day into 
one mighty voice of sorrow, resounding throughout our 
country, and extending over all parts of the world where his 
great genius and his many virtues are known. For not to 
the Southern people alone shall be limited the tribute of 
a tear over the dead Virginian. Here in the North, forget- 
ting that the time was when the sword of Eobert Edward Lee 
was drawn against us — forgetting and forgiving all the years 
of bloodshed and agony — we have long since ceased to look 
upon him as the Confederate leader, but have claimed him as 
one of ourselves ; have cherished and felt proud of his mili- 
tory genius as belonging to us ; have recounted and recorded 
his triumphs as our own ; have extolled his virtue as reflect- 
ing upon us — ^for Robert Edward Lee was an American, and 
the great nation which gave him birth would be to-day un- 
worthy of such a son if she regarded him lightly. 

" Kever had mother a nobler son. In him the military 
genius of America was developed to a greater extent than 
ever before. In him all that was pure and lofty in mind and 
purpose found lodgment. Dignified without presumption, 
affable without familiarity, he united all those charms of 
manners which made him the idol of his friends and of his 
soldiers, and won for him the respect and admiration of the 
world. Even as, in the days of his triumph, glory did not 
intoxicate, so, when the dark clouds swept over him, adver- 
sity did not depress. From the hour that he surrendered his 
sword at Appomattox to the fatal autumn morning, he passed 
among men, noble in his quiet, simple dignity, displaying 
neither bitterness nor regret over the irrevocable past. He 
conquered us in misfortune by the grand manner in which 
he sustained himself, even as he dazzled us by his genius 
when the tramp of his soldiers resounded through the valleys 
of Yirginia. 

" And for such a man we are all tears and sorrow to-day. 



THE SOLDIER. 63 

Standing beside his grave, men of the South and men of the 
IS^orth can mom-n with all the bitterness of four years of war- 
fare erased by this common bereavement. May this unity 
of grief — this unselfish manifestation over the loss of the 
Bayard of America — in the season of dead leaves and with- 
ered branches which this death ushers in, bloom and blossom 
like the distant coming spring into the flowers of a heartier 
accord ! 

" .... In person General Lee was a notably handsome 
man. He was tall of statm'e, and admirably proportioned ; his 
features were regular and most amiable in appearance, and in 
his manners he was courteous and dignified. In social life 
he was much admired. As a slaveholder, he was beloved by 
his slaves for his kindness and consideration toward them. 
General Lee was also noted for his piety. He was an Epis- 
copalian, and was a regular attendant at church. Having a 
perfect command over his temper, he was never seen angry, 
and his most intimate friends never heard him utter an oath. 
Indeed, it is doubtful if there are many men of the present 
generation who unite so many virtues and so few vices in 
each of themselves as did General Lee. He came nearer the 
ideal of a soldier and Christian general than any man we can 
think of, for he was a greater soldier than Havelock, and 
equally as devout a Christian. In his death our country has 
lost a son of whom she might well be proud, and for whose 
ser\dces she might have stood in need had he lived a few 
years longer, for we are certain that, had occasion required 
it, General Lee would have given to the United States the 
benefit of all his great talents." 

The Philadelphia Age thus concluded an extended criti- 
cism of his military career : 

"His best-fought fields were on the Peninsula and at 
Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg, and the long, desperate, 
brilhant, unequal struggle, the successes of which will fill the 
soldier with admiration and wonder, though to the popular 
eye they are merged in the fall of Kichmond and the capitu- 



64 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

lation of his army. As a great master of defensive warfare, 
Lee will probaLly not be ranked inferior to any general 
known in history. Whether those for whom he fought will 
rank him ultimately above Johnston and Jackson, or how he 
will stand on the page of history, in comparison with his 
great opponents, we have neither ability nor inclination to 
discuss. It is not om' aim to-day to criticise, nor to broach 
political questions, but to pay our tribute of respect and hon- 
or to a great man, who fought fairly and nobly on the side 
he took, sincerely believing it to be, according to his light, 
the side to which patriotism and honor summoned him. 
There are too many men in the world who willfully go wrong 
from base and venal and selfish motives. Let us be chari- 
table to the brave and good, who, if they err, err because hu- 
man judgment is fallible, the circumstances of their position 
difficult, and the path of duty, which they wish to follow, is 
not, to their eyes, clearly discernible." 

The Cincinnati Inquirer paid him the following trib- 
ute: 

" The world knows of his virtues and his private worth, 
and the men who have commanded armies can bear witness 
to his valor and skill as a man of arms. He was the great 
general of the 'Rebellion.' It was his strategy and supe- 
rior mihtary knowledge which kept the banner of the South 
afloat so long, and the campaign of the Widerness, the de- 
fense of Richmond, and the bold advances into Maryland 
and Pennsylvania, which only failed because of insufficient 
numbers, established him long before the close of the war as 
one whom the powerful press of England might well pro- 
claim ' the great captain of the age,' There is no man so 
bigoted to-day as not to believe that if Grant had commanded 
the ill-provided, half -fed army which stood like a wall of fire 
around Richmond, and the command of that grand army 
which went down into the Wilderness could have been given 
to Lee, the flag of the Union would have floated over the 
Confederate capital long before h did." 



THE SOLDIER. 65 

Horace Greelej can be suspected of no undue partiality 
to Lee, and his book, " The American Conflict," is verj far 
from fair to the Confederates, but in his account of the clos- 
ing scene at Appomattox he is constrained to say : " The 
parting of Lee with his devoted followers was a sad one. 
Of the proM army which, dating its victories from Bull 
Run, had driven McClellan from before Richmond, and with- 
stood his best effort at Antietam, and shattered Bm-nside's 
host at Fredericksburg, and worsted Hooker at Chancellors- 
ville, and fought Meade so stoutly, though unsuccessfully, 
before Gettysburg, and baffled Grant's bounteous resources 
and desperate efforts in the "Wilderness, at Spottsylvania, on 
the North Anna, at Cold Harbor, and before Petersburg 
and Richmond, a mere wreck remained. It is said that twenty- 
seven thousand were included in Lee's capitulation ; but of 
these not more than ten thousand had been able to carry their 
arms thus far on their hopeless and almost f oodless flight. 
Barely nineteen miles from Lynchburg when surrendered, 
the physical possibility of forcing their way thither even at the 
cost of half their number no longer remained. And if they 
were all safely there, what then ? The resources of the Con- 
federacy were utterly exhausted. Of the one hundred and fifty 
thousand men whose names were borne on its muster-rolls a few 
weeks ago, at least one-third were already disabled or prisoners, 
and the residue could neither be clad nor fed — not to dream of 
their being fully armed or paid ; while the resources of the loyal 
States were scarcely touched, their ranks nearly or quite as 
full as ever, and their supplies of ordnance, small-arms, mu- 
nitions, etc., more ample than in any previous April. Of 
the million or so borne on our muster-rolls, probably not 
more than half were in active service, with haK so many 
more able to take the field at short notice. The rebellion 
had failed and gone down ; but the rebel army of Virginia 
and its commander had not failed. Fighting sternly against 
the inevitable ; against the irrepressible tendencies — the gen- 
erous aspirations of the age, they had been proved unable 
5 



66 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

to succeed when success would have been a calamity to their 
children, to their country, and to the human race. And 
when the transient agony of defeat had been endured and 
passed, they all experienced a sense of relief as they crowded 
around their departing chief, who, with streaming eyes, 
grasped and pressed their outstretched hands, at length find- 
ing words to say : ' Men, we have fought through the war 
together. I have done the best that I could for you.' There 
were few dry eyes among those who witnessed the scene." 

Swinton, in his " Army of the Potomac," a book of con- 
siderable ability, which, while making grave errors, has some 
show of fairness to the South, pays frequent and high tribute 
to Lee's ability as a soldier ; on page 16 he writes as follows : 
" Nor can there fail to arise the image of that other army, 
that was the adversary of the Army of the Potomac, and 
which who can ever forget that once looked upon it ? — that 
array of tattered uniforms and bright muskets — that body 
of incomparable infantry, the Army of Northern Virginia, 
which for four years carried the revolt on its bayonets, op- 
posing a constant front to the mighty concentration of power 
brought against it ; which, receiving terrible blows, did not 
fail to give the like ; and which, vital in all its parts, died 
only with its annihilation." 

If it be said that even the opinions of Northern writers 
are biased by the fact that Lee was an American^ and that 
they really exalt their own soldiers in proportion to the high 
estimate they place on their great antagonist, we have only 
to quote from foreign writers, who may be supposed to be 
entirely impartial. 

The Halifax (Nova Scotia) Morning Chronicle of Octo- 
ber 14, 1870, contained a most beautiful tribute to General 
Lee, from which the following extract is taken : 

" ' Ah, Sir Lancelot,' he said, ' thou wert head of all 
Christian knights; and now, I dare say,' said Sir Ector, 
'thou. Sir Lancelot, there thou liest, that thou wert never 
matched of earthly knights' hand ; and thou wert the court- 



THE SOLDIER. 67 

liest knight that ever bare shield .... and thou wert the 
kindest man that ever strake with sword ; and thou wert the 
goodliest person that ever came among press of knights ; 
and thou wert the meekest man and the gentliest that ever 
ate in hall among ladies ; and thou wert the sternest knight 
to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in rest.' — The Mort 
d' Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory. 

" With reverence and regret we repeat to-day Sir Ector's 
words of sorrow for the great Sir Lancelot, and apply them 
to the man who died yesterday — the noblest knight of our 
generation. The hero of the Arthurian legends, as he lay 
dead in Joyous-Gard with the record of a life made splendid 
by great deeds, might have revived other than kindly or en- 
nobling recollections in the mourner's mind ; for the wronged 
king, and the breaking up of the goodly fellowship of the 
E-ound Table could not be forgotten, but lay like shadows 
upon the dead knight. But in the Hfe of Robert Edward 
Lee there was no reproach of man or woman ; his deeds were 
dimmed by no wrong done or duty unfulfilled ; there was 
no stain upon his honor, and no unrighteous blood upon 
his hands. He was, indeed, a good knight, noble of heart 
and strong of purpose, and both a soldier and a gentleman. 
The age that knew him, if not the age of chivalry, will yet 
be remarkable for having produced in him a man as chival- 
ric as any that lives in history. He, too, was one, and the 
greatest one, of a goodly fellowship that was broken up and 
scattered about the world. Some of these Southern knights 
have gone before him, and with him departs the last rem- 
nant of the cause for which they fought and the strength 
that so long upheld it. 

" Only nine years ago he was a colonel of cavaliy in the 
United States army, and yesterday he died the greatest sol- 
dier in the world. Four years' service in the field at the 
head of an army gained for him this reputation, and though 
he was worsted at the last, it was a reputation that he did not 
lose with his losses. It is strong praise to give to him, but 



68 THE SOLDIER. 

none the less desei'ved, for even his former enemies must 
concede to him the first place in the civil war, and we know 
of no living European general who possesses to the same 
extent those attributes of a soldier which so distinguished 
the Confederate leader. It is true that Europe has yet ]^a- 
pier, and McMahon, and Yon Moltke, and that America has 
also Sherman and Sheridan and Longstreet, but all these 
men and all their fellow-soldiers lack the grandeur which 
was inherent in Lee. 

" In every particular he possessed the requisites of a true 
soldier. He was brave ; his whole military record and his 
life-long scorn of danger alike bear testimony to his bravery. 
He was wise ; his great successes against great odds, and 
his almost constant anticipation of the enemy's movements, 
were proofs of his wisdom. He was skillful ; his forced 
marches and unerpected victories assert his skill. He was 
patient and unyielding ; his weary struggle against the mighty 
armies of the Korth, and his stern defense of Richmond, will 
forever preserve the memory of his patience and resolution. 
He was gentle and just ; the soldiers who fought under him 
and who came alive out of the great fight, remembering and 
cherishing the memory of the man, can one and all testify 
to his gentleness and his justice. Above all, he was faithful ; 
when he gave up his sword there was no man in his own 
ranks or in those of the enemy that doubted his faith, or 
believed that he had not done all that mortal could do for the 
cause for which he had made such a noble struggle. . . . 

" His military genius derives its most important proof from 
the fact that, from the time of his appointment to the posi- 
tion of Confederate commander-in-chief until the close of the 
war, the appointment was never changed. There were many 
talented and brave men in the South — ^men like Longstreet 
and Folk, and the two Johnstons, and that one who took 
with him to a soldier's grave the love of the whole world, 
and the name of Stonewall Jackson. But there was only 
one Lee, and to him the South knew must her safety and 



THE SOLDIER. 69 

her hopes be committed. He failed to realize these hopes, 
but he gained, if not for his cause, at least for his country 
and himself, a glorj imperishable and unclouded by his de- 
feat. On the other hand, the army of the North was com- 
pelled to endure a long succession of leaders, one as inca- 
pable as the other, until men of real worth were discovered 
at last. It seems incredible, on looking back to that war- 
time, that Lee should have held his own so long and so 
bravely, when he was opposed to ever-changing tactics, and 
a fo:^ce immensely superior in numbers. Only a king of 
men could have possessed such corn-age and endurance, and 
his whole life is a proof that among the brotherhood of men 
Lee was indeed a king. 

" When the last chance was gone, and aU hope was at an 
end, the old hero bowed to a higher will than his own, and ac- 
cepted the fate of the South with calm grandem*. But he 
was done with all his wars. He could never take the field 
again ; he knew that it was not for him to see the act of 
secession upheld by the South and recognized by the North, 
and after the failure of his own countrymen he was too old 
and war-worn to di-aw his sword in a foreign quarrel. He 
passed from the fever of the camp into the quiet of the clois- 
ter, and as the President of Washington College, in Yirginia, 
spent the remaining portion of his sixty-three years in work- 
ing for the good of his native State. 

" We cannot express all the truth that could be told about 
Lee, nor can we do justice to his worth and fame, but per- 
haps the few words of Sir Ector are the best after all. He 
was a good knight, a true gentleman ; knowing this, let us 
leave him with fame and posterity ; with the rest, the light, 
the Resurrection and the Life." 

On the announcement of the illness of General Lee, the 
London Standard paid him* a glowing tribute, from which 
the following extract is taken : 

"Whatever differences of opinion may exist as to the 
merits of the generals against whom he had to contend, and 



70 KEMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

especially of tlie antagonist by whom lie was at last over- 
come, no one pretending to understand in the least either the 
general principles of military science, or the particular condi- 
tions of the American war, doubts that General Lee gave 
higher proofs of military genius and soldiership than any of 
his opponents. He was outnumbered from first to last ; and 
all his victories were gained against greatly superior forces, 
and with troops deficient in every necessary of war except 
courage and discipline. IS^ever perhaps was so much achieved 
against odds so terrible. The Southern soldiers — ' that in- 
comparable Southern infantry' to which a late J^orthern 
writer renders due tribute of respect — were no doubt as 
splendid troops as a general could desire, but the different 
fortune of the war in the East and in the West proves that 
the Yirginian army owed something of its excellence to its 
chief. Always outnumbered, always opposed to a foe abun- 
dantly supplied with food, transports, ammunition, clothing, 
all that was wanting to his own men, he was always able to 
make courage and skill supply the deficiency of strength 
and of supplies ; and from the day when he assumed the 
command after the battle of Seven Pines, where General 
Joseph Johnston was disabled, to the morning of the final 
surrender at Appomattox Court-House, he was almost invari- 
ably victorious in the field. At Gettysburg only he was de- 
feated in a pitched battle ; on the offensive at the Chicka- 
hominy, at Centreville, and at Chancellorsville ; on the defen- 
sive at Antietam, Fredericksburg, the Wilderness, and Spott- 
sylvania, he was still successful. But no success could avail 
hun any thing from the moment that General Grant brought 
to bear upon the Yu-ginia army the inexhaustible population 
of the North, and, employing Sherman to cut them off from 
the rest of the Confederacy, set himself to work to wear 
them out by the simple process of exchanging two lives for 
one. From that moment the fate of Eichmond and of the 
South was sealed. When General Lee commenced the cam- 
paign of the Wilderness he had, we believe, about fifty thou- 



THE SOLDIER. Yl 

sand men — ^his adversary had thrice that number at hand, and 
a still larger force in reserve. When the Army of Yirginia 
marched out of Richmond it still numbered some twenty-six 
thousand men ; after a retreat of six days, in the face of an 
overwhelming enemy, with a crushing artillery — a retreat 
impeded by constant fighting, and harassed by countless 
hordes of cavalry — eight thousand were given up by the ca- 
pitulation of Appomattox Court-House. Brilliant as were 
General Lee's earlier triumphs, we believe that he gave high- 
er proofs of genius in his last campaign, and that hardly any 
of his victories were so honorable to himself and his army as 
that six days' retreat." 

The Montreal (Canada) Telegrajyh published during the 
war the following, which not a few intelligent foreigners 
will heartily indorse : 

" Posterity will rank General Lee above Wellington or 
Napoleon, before Saxe or Turenne, above Marlborough or 
Frederick, before Alexander or Caesar. Careful of the lives 
of his men, fertile in resource, a profound tactician, gifted 
with the swift intuition which enables a commander to dis- 
cern the purpose of his enemy, and the power of rapid com- 
bination which enables him to oppose to it a prompt resist- 
ance ; modest, frugal, self-denying, void of arrogance or self- 
assertion, trusting nothing to chance ; among men noble as 
the noblest, in the lofty dignity of the Christian gentleman ; 
among patriots less self-seeking, and as pure as Washington ; 
and among soldiers combining the religious simplicity of 
Havelock with the genius of l!^apoleon, the heroism of Bay- 
ard and Sidney, and the untiring, never-faltering duty of 
Wellington: in fact, Robert E. Lee, of Yirginia, is the 
greatest general of this or any other age. He has made his 
own name, and the Confederacy he served, immortal." 

Colonel Charles Cornwallis Chesney, the reputed author 
of the " Battle of Dorking," and perhaps the most distin- 
guished of the English military critics, has recently published 
a volume of " Military Biography," from which we take the 
following extracts : 



73 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" . . . . Lee's first battle, in fact, was as striking a suc- 
cess, and as well earned, as any of the more famous victories 
in after-days whicli have been so widely studied and so often 
extolled. 'No word henceforward from his Government of 
any want of confidence in his powers, or fear of his over- 
caution. From that hour he became the most trusted, as 
well as the most noted, general of the Confederacy. As to 
his soldiery, his hardy bearing, free self -exposure, and con- 
stant presence near their ranks, completed the influence 
gained by that power of combining their force to advantage 
which they instinctively felt without fully understanding. 
From man to man flew the story of the hour. The subtile 
influence of sympathy, wljich wins many hearts for one, was 
never more rapidly exercised. Like l!Tapoleon, his troops 
soon learned to believe him equal to every emergency that 
war could bring. Like Hannibal, he could speak lightly and 
calmly at the gravest moments, being then himself least 
grave. Like Raglan, he preserved a sweetness of temper 
that no person or circumstance could ruffle. Like Caesar, he 
mixed with the crowd of soldiery freely, and never feared 
that his position would be forgotton. Like Blucher, his one 
recognized fault was that which the soldier readily forgives — 
a readiness to expose his life beyond the proper hmits permit- 
ted by modern war to the commander-in-chief. What won- 
der, then, if he thenceforward commanded an army in which 
each man would have died for him ; an army from which 
his parting wrung tears more bitter than any the fall of their 
cause could extort ; an army which followed him, after three 
years of glorious vicissitudes, into private life without one 
thought of further resistance against the fate to which their 
adored chief yielded without a murmur ? " 

He thus speaks of the dark days of the winter of 1864— 
'65: . . . 

" IS'ot in the first flush of triumph when his army cheered 
liis victory over McClellan ; not when hurling back Federal 
masses three times the weight of his own on the banks of the 



THE SOLDIER. 73 

Rappahannock ; nor even when advancing, the commander 
of victorious legions, to carry the war away from his loved 
Virginia into the North, had Lee seemed so great, or won the 
love of his soldiers so closely, as through the dark winter that 
followed. Overworked his men were sadly, with forty miles 
of intrenchments for that weakened army to guard. Their 
prospects were increasingly gloomy as month passed by after 
month, bringing them no reenforcements, while their enemy 
became visibly stronger. Their rations grew scantier and 
poorer, while the jocund merriment of the investing lines 
told of abundance often raised to luxury by voluntary tribute 
from the wealth of the North. The indiscipline, too long al- 
lowed, told on them ; and, with the pangs of hunger added, 
led to desertion, foraierly almost unknown in the Army of 
Virginia. But the confidence of the men in their beloved 
chief never faltered. Their sufferings were never laid on 
' Uncle Robert.' The simple piety which all knew the rule 
of his life, acted upon thousands of those under him with a 
power which those can hardly understand who know not how 
community of hope, suffering, and danger, fairly shared, amid 
the vicissitudes of war, quickens the sympathies of the rough- 
est and lowest as well as of those above them. He who was 
known to every soldier under him to have forbidden his staff 
to disturb the impromptu prayer-meeting which stopped their 
way when hurrying to the fierce battle in the Wilderness ; he 
whose exposure was seen by all to grow only greater as the 
hour grew darker ; he who was as constant in the lines during 
the monotonous watch against the foe that never attacked as 
he had been when Grant hurled fresh legions on him day 
after day in the blood-stained thickets of Spottsylvania ; he 
who, in short, had long lived up to the motto he had com- 
mended to his son on entering life, as the only sure guide, 
'Duty is the sublimest word in our language;' now illus- 
trated in his own person that other motto which he be- 
queathed to the army when it dissolved, 'Human virtue 
should be equal to hmnan calamity.' The vision of becoming 



74 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

the new Washington of a new republic — ^had he ever enter- 
tained it — had faded away with all its natural ambition. The 
very hope of saving from humiliation the State for whose 
safety and honor he had sacrificed his high prospects in the 
army of the Union, must now be despaired of. Yet the firm- 
ness of his bearing, and his unfaltering attention to the hourly 
business of his ofiice, never declined for a moment, and im- 
pressed alike the f alhng Government of the Confederacy, the 
dejected citizens of its capital, and the humblest soldiers of its 
army." 

He thus closes his honest soldier's tribute to the great Con- 
federate chieftain : . . . 

"So passed away the greatest victim of the civil war. 
Even in the farthest I^orth, where he had once been execrated 
as the worst enemy of the Union, the tidings caused a thrill 
of regret. But though America has learned to pardon, she 
has yet to attain the full reconciliation for which the dead hero 
would have sacrificed a hundred lives. Time can only bring 
this to a land which in her agony bled at every pore. Time^ 
the healer of all wounds, will bring it yet. The day will come 
when the evil passions of the great civil strife will sleep in 
oblivion, and North and South do justice to each other's mo- 
tives, and forget each other's wrongs. Then history will speak 
with clear voice of the deeds done on either side, and the citi- 
zens of the whole Union do justice to the memories of the 
dead, and place above all others the name of the great chief 
of whom we have wiitten. In strategy mighty, in battle ter- 
rible, in adversity as in prosperity a hero indeed, with the sim- 
ple devotion to duty and the rare purity of the ideal Christian 
knight, he joined all the kingly qualities of a leader of men. 

" It is a wondrous future indeed that lies before Amer- 
ica ; but in her annals of years to come, as in those of the 
past, there will be found few names that can rival in unsullied 
lustre that of the heroic defender of his native Yirginia, 
Robert Edward Lee." 

Another English soldier — Colonel Lawler — who visited 



THE SOLDIER. 75 

General Lee at his headquarters during the war, and con- 
ceived the warm admiration for him of every one who came 
into personal contact with him, thus wrote in BlacTcwood's 
Magazine : 

" One of England's greatest soldiers, Sir Charles James 
Napier, exclaims, ' How much more depends upon the 
chief than upon the numbers of an araij ! Alexander in- 
vaded Persia with only thirty thousand foot and five thou- 
sand horse ; Hannibal entered Italy with twenty thousand 
foot and six thousand horse, having lost thirty thousand 
men in crossing the Alps. "Wliat did he attempt with this 
small army? The conquest of Italy from the Romans, 
who with their allies could bring into the field eight hun- 
dred thousand men in arms; and he maintained the war 
there for fifteen years.' Without maintaining that General 
Lee, who was neither an Alexander nor a Hannibal, had 
such odds against him as these two great captains of ancient 
history, we doubt whether any general of modern history 
ever sustained for four years — a longer time nowadays than 
Hannibal's fifteen years in the remote past — a war in which, 
while disposing of scanty resources himself, he had against 
him so enormous an aggregate of men, horses, ships, and 
supplies. It is an under rather than over estimate of the re- 
spective strength of the two sections to state that dm-ing the 
first two years the odds, all told, were ten to one, during the 
last two twenty to one, against the Confederates. The pro- 
longation of the struggle is in no slight degree attributed to 
Mr. Jefferson Davis, whose high character and unselfishness 
are, even now, undervalued by Confederates, and totally 
denied by his conquerors. The courage of the rank and file 
of the rebel army is refreshing to contemplate in these days, 
which have seen a Em'opean war between two nations equal 
in numbers and resources triumphantly closed in seven 
months, and stained by the three unprecedented capitula- 
tions of Sedan, Metz, and Paris. But, after all, the one 
name which, in connection with the gi'eat American Civil 



76 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

"War, jposteris narratum atque i/raditum sujperstes erit, is the 
name of Robert Edward Lee." 

He concludes his criticism by saying : 

" The fame and character of General Lee will hereafter 
be regarded in Em-ope and in America under a dual aspect. 
In Europe we shall consider him merely as a soldier ; and it 
is more than probable that within the present century we 
shall have accustomed ourselves to regard him as third upon 
the hst of English-speaking generals, and as having been sm*- 
passed in soldierly capacity by Marlborough and Wellington 
alone. In America, when the passions of the great Civil 
War shall have died out, Lee will be regarded more as a man 
than as a soldier. His infinite purity, self-denial, tenderness, 
and generosity, will make his memory more and more pre- 
cious to his countrymen when they have purged their minds 
of the prejudices and animosities which civil war invariably 
breeds. They will acknowledge before long that Lee took no 
step in life except in accordance with what he regarded as, 
and believed to be, his duty." 

The London Times, in an able review of Colonel Ches- 
ney's book, after an extended notice of Grant, concludes as 
follows : 

" Tliis determined soldier is not, however — and Colonel 
Chesney agrees with our judgment — to be compared with 
his greatest opponent, in the highest attainments of the milita- 
ry art ; and as Hannibal, notwithstanding Zama, towers over 
the very inferior Scipio, the figure of Lee eclipses Grant, 
though Lee succumbed to the Northern chief. Colonel Ches- 
ney's essay on the brilliant career of the renowned leader of 
the Yirginian army is too short to do the theme justice, but 
it is very attractive and full of interest. We have no space 
to notice the pleasing description he has given us of the pri- 
vate hfe of Lee, nor yet to comment on the public virtues of 
the high-minded citizen who drew his sword reluctantly' in 
what he thought the rightful cause, and bore himself like a 
true patriot when reproach and disaster gathered around 



THE SOLDIER. 77 

him. A few words are all that we can devote to the niili- 
tary powers of this great captain ; and they are, indeed, su- 
perfluous, for their best monument is the battle-fields of the 
American War. It may be said, however, that Lee has a 
place in the foremost rank of modem strategists ; he pos- 
sessed in the very highest degree ability for the great opera- 
tions of war ; few generals have ever, in Colonel Hamley's 
phrase, 'interpreted the theatre' with equal insight and 
known as well how to turn it to account ; and no one certain- 
ly since the time of Napoleon has conquered against such 
immense odds, and has so long and fiercely disputed the 
prize of victory with failing resources. His combinations, 
indeed, bear a striking resemblance in many particulars to 
those of the emperor ; like him, he gained astonishing suc- 
cess by the well-planned use of interior lines and bold move- 
ments against divided foes ; like him, he avoided the timid 
system of passive defense as a general rule, and seemed the 
assailant, though on the defensive ; like him, he possessed a 
fund of resom'ces in his own genius which effected wonders ; 
like him, too, he was swift and terible in availing himself of 
the mistakes of an enemy. Thus it has happened that his 
campaigns have much in common with those of Napoleon, 
and fascinate the reader for the same reasons. They ex- 
hibit the triumph of profound intelligence, of calculation, 
and of well-employed force over numbers, slowness, and dis- 
united counsels, like those of 1796 and 1814 ; and his victory 
on the Chickahominy in 1862, and the outmanoeuvring of 
Grant in 1864, may fitly compare with Areola or Rivoli and 
with the immortal struggle on the Marne and Seine. Lee, 
too, has never been surpassed in the art of winning the pas- 
sionate love of his troops, and, as with all generals of a high 
order, his lieutenants looked up to him with perfect confi- 
dence, and saw in his commands a presage of victory." 

The following inscription and poem accompanied the pre- 
sentation of a perfect copy of the " Translation of the Ihad 
of Homer, into Spenserian Stanza," by Philip Stanhope 



78 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

"Worsley, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford — a scliolar 
and poet whose untimely death, noticed with deepest regret 
throughout the literary world in England, has cut short a ca- 
reer of the brightest promise : 

" To General R. E. Lee — the most stainless of living com- 
manders, and, except in fortune, the greatest — this volume 
is presented with the writer's earnest sympathy, and respect- 
ful admiration : 

'" . . . olog yap episTo 'l2,iov 'E/crop.' " 

Iliad, vi., 403. 

" The grand old bard that never dies, 
Keceive him in our English tongue 1 
I send thee, but with weeping eyesj 
The story that he sung. 

" Thy Troy is fallen, thy dear land 

Is marred beneath the spoiler's heel. 
I cannot trust my trembling hand 
To write the things I feel. 

" Ah, realm of tombs ! — but let her bear 
' This blazon to the last of times : 

No nation rose so white and fair, 
Or fell so pure of crimes. 

" The widow's moan, the orphan's wail, 

Come round the« ; yet in truth be strong ! 
Eternal right, though all else fail, 
Can never be made wrong. 

" An angel's heart, an angel's mouth, 
Not Homer's, could alone for me 
Hymn well the great Confederate South, 
Virginia first, and Lee. 

*'P. S. W." 

Professor George Long, of England — the great scholar and 
high-toned gentleman — has, in a note to the second edition 
of his translation of the " Thoughts of the Emperor M. Au- 
relius Antoninus," the following graceful tribute :"...! 
have never dedicated a book to any man, and if I dedicated 



THE SOLDIER. 79 

this I should choose the man whose name seemed to me most 
worthy to be joined to that of the Roman soldier and philos- 
opher. I might dedicate the book to the successful general 
who is now President of the United States, with the hope 
that his integrity and justice will restore peace and happiness, 
so far as he can, to those unhappy States who have suffered 
60 much from war, and the unrelenting hostility of wicked 
men. But as the Roman poet said, ' Victrix causa deis pla- 
cuit, sed victa Catoni ; ' and if I dedicated this little book to 
any man, I would dedicate it to him who led the Confederate 
armies against the powerful invader, and retired from an 
unequal contest defeated, but not dishonored ; to the noble 
Virginian soldier, whose talents and virtues place him by the 
side of the best and wisest man who sat on the throne of the 
imperial Caesars." 

If such is the opinion of disinterested foreign critics (who 
have been compelled to receive their information in large 
measure through l^orthem sources, and who have not been 
able, therefore, to do full justice to his transcendent abilities), 
we cannot doubt that the future historian, when he scans care- 
fully all of the facts, will rank our noble chief tJoe peer, ifriot 
the superior, of any soldier of either ancient or inodern times 
— that the world will one day indorse the estimate of the 
London Standard, " A country which has given birth to men 
like him, and those who followed him, may look the chivalry 
of Europe in the face without shame ; for tJie fatfoerJands of 
Sidney and of Bayard never produced a nobler soldier, gen- 
tleman, and Christian, than General E-obeet E. Lee." 



CHAPTER II. 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 



Among my most cherished " personal reminiscences " of 
this gi-eat man are those last years of his life at Lexington, 
when he toiled for the young men of the country as the quiet 
but able and laborious President of "Washington College. 

But, instead of my own recollections of how grandly he 
accomplished his work, I deem myself fortunate in being per- 
mitted to present papers prepared by two members of the able 
and accomplished Faculty which General Lee called around 
him. The following sketch was (at the request of the Faculty) 
written by the Pev. Dr. J. L. Kirkpatrick for the projected 
" Memorial Yolume," and the MS. has been kindly placed at 
my disposal. It is given (without essential abridgment) as 
a deeply interesting, accurate, and authorized account of his 
career as a college president : 

" In the sketch which follows, nothing further will be at- 
tempted than a brief and simple exhibition of that portion of 
General Lee's life which was passed at Washington College, 
and of this only as it relates to his official work as president 
of that institution. 

" SOME INCroENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE COLLEGE. 

"Washington College is the outgrowth of an academy 
founded in the year 1749. This was the first classical school 
opened in the Yalley of Virginia. Under a succession of 
principals, and with several changes of site, the academy at 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 81 

length acquired such a reputation as to attract the attention 
of General Washington, from whom it received a munificent 
endowment, and its subsequent name. The endowment was 
the gift of one hundred shares of what was known as the 
' Old James River Company,' tendered him by the Legisla- 
ture of Virginia, and accepted by him on the condition that 
he should be allowed to appropriate it ' to some public pur- 
pose in the upper part of the State, such as the education of 
the children of the poor, particularly of such as have fallen in 
the defense of their countiy.' This fact in the history of the 
institution is believed to have had no small influence on the 
mind of General Lee, in disposing liim to accept its presi- 
dency, and in prompting him to the measures which he in- 
augurated for its further endowment and usefulness. His 
profomid veneration for the character and his desire to per- 
petuate the deeds and virtues of Washington were a controll- 
ing impulse of his own moral nature. 

" At the time of General Lee's accession to the presidency, 
the college had, through the calamities of the civil war, 
reached the lowest point of depression it had ever known. 
In addition to the calamities common to the whole country, 
against which it manfully struggled until further effort was 
shown to be unavailing, it suffered during the war the spolia- 
tion of its buildings, library, and apparatus, at the hands of a 
hostile soldieiy left free to sack and plunder at their pleasure ; 
and, at the close of the war, through the impoverishment of 
the State and the country, its invested funds were rendered 
unproductive, with the gravest uncertainty as to their ulti- 
mate value. Four professors remained at their post, and 
about forty students were gathered, chiefly from the region 
contiguous to the college. 

" In such a state of affairs and with such prospects, it 
seemed a bold if not a presumptuous step to invite General 
Lee to assume the headship of the institution. So it im- 
pressed the minds of the people at large. There was a gen- 
eral expectation that he would decline the position — as not 
6 



82 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

sufficiently lucrative, if liis pui"pose was to repair the ruins 
to his private fortunes resulting from the war ; as not lifting 
him conspicuously enough in the public gaze, if he was am- 
bitious of office or further distinction ; or as invohnng too 
great labor and anxiety, if he coveted repose after the terri- 
ble contest from which he had just emerged. 

" As far as it is now known, the person first to suggest an 
effort to obtain the services of General Lee for the vacant 
presidency was the Hon. Bolivar Christian, of Staunton, a 
member of the Board of Trustees. He mentioned the sub- 
ject to some confidential friends near him, one of whom wrote 
to General Lee, then in Cumberland County, where with his 
family he had made a home for the time. Owing to the defi- 
ciencies in tlie mail facilities, the answer which was expected 
to this letter did not reach Staunton until after Colonel 
Christian had left home to attend a meeting of the Board 
of Trustees, convened for the purpose of electing a president. 
The answer had been written and mailed, and such was its 
tenor that, had it been received in due time, it is almost cer- 
tain the thought of securing General Lee for the college 
would have been abandoned as hopeless. The Board as- 
sembled, and Colonel Christian proposed Generel Lee for 
the presidency. The proposition, received at first with sur- 
prise, was weighed long and anxiously by the body ; not, of 
course, that there was any hesitaton as to the desirableness of 
obtaining his services, or that there was any other man 
whom any member would have preferred for the place ; but 
in view of the probabilities of a failure, should the eflPort be 
made, and of the effect of such failure on the interests of the 
college. Besides, the accession of General Lee to the presi- 
dency would carry with it extensive modifications of the 
scheme of instruction as previously in operation, and these 
would demand an enlargement of the resources of the insti- 
tution which, in the existing condition of the country, it 
might have seemed mere rashness to attempt to provide. 
But the Board had faith in the Providence which, as they in- 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 83 

terpreted its signs, pointed to General Lee for the position, 
had faith in the man himself, and in the disposition of our 
people toward an institution with which he should be so 
prominently associated. Among other proceedings of the 
body, bearing the date August 4, 1865, appears this simple 
record : ' The order of the day was resumed, and General 
Robert E. Lee, being put in nomination by Mr, Christian 
was unanimously chosen president.' The Hon. John W. 
Brockenbrough, the rector of the Board, was appointed by 
the body to convey in person to General Lee the notification 
of his election, and lay before him such information respect- 
ing the history of the college, its existing condition and future 
plans, as he might desire to possess. The mission was one 
grateful to the feelings of the distinguished gentleman to 
whom it was intrusted, and was discharged with promptness, 
ability, and success. 

" Those who are acquainted with the modesty which was a 
ruling characteristic of General Lee in all the positions he 
was called to occupy, and with his thorough conscientiousness, 
will not be surprised to learn that he was, at first, strongly disin- 
clined to accept the appointment, which, as already intimated, 
he had wished to arrest, and probably supposed he had ar- 
rested, in its inception. Nor will t/ie>/ be surprised to learn 
that the grounds of his reluctance were wholly different 
from those which strangers to his true character, judging 
him by the standard applicable to men generally, would have 
assigned as the cause of his hesitancy. These grounds are 
explicitly set forth in his letter of acceptance, which, as being 
of much interest to others as well as to the authorities of the 
college, is here given at length : 

" ' Powhatan County, August 24, 1865. 
"'Gentlemen: I have delayed for some days replying to 
your letter of the 5th inst., informing me of my election, by the 
Board of Trustees, to the presidency of Washington College, 
from a desire to give the subject due consideration. Fully im- 
pressed with the responsibilities of the office, I have feared that 



84 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

I shoiild be unable to discharge its duties to the satisfaction of 
the trustees, or to the benefit of the country. The proper edu- 
cation of youth requires not only great ability, but, I fear, more 
strength than I now possess, for I do not feel able to undergo 
the labor of conducting classes in regular courses of instruction ; 
I cotdd not therefore undertake more than the general adminis- 
tration and supervision of the institution. There is another 
subject which has caused me serious reflection, and is, I think, 
worthy of the consideration of the Board. Being excluded 
from the terms of amnesty in the proclamation of the President 
of the United States, of the 29th of May last, and an object of 
censure to a portion of the country, I have thought it probable 
that my occupation of the position of president might draw 
upon the college a feeling of hostility ; and I should therefore 
cause injury to an institution which it would be my highest 
desire to advance. I think it the duty of every citizen, in the 
present condition of the country, to do all in his power to aid 
in the restoration of peace and harmony, and in no way to 
oppose the policy of the State or General Government, directed 
to that object. It is particularly incumbent on those charged 
with the instruction of the young to set them an example of 
submission to authority, and I could not consent to be the cause 
of animadversion upon the college. 

" ' Should you, however, take a different view, and think that 
my services in the position tendered to me by the Board will 
be advantageous to the college and country, I will yield to 
your judgment, and accept it ; otherwise I must most respect- 
fully decline the office. 

" ' Begging you to express to the trustees of the college my 
heart-felt gratitude for the honor conferred upon me, and request- 
ing you to accept my cordial thanks for the kind manner in 
which you have communicated their decision, I am, gentlemen, 
with great respect, 

" ' Your most obedient servant, 

" ' R. E. Lee. 

" ' Messrs. John W. Brockenbbough, Rector ; S. McD. 

Reid ; Alfred Leyburn ; Horatio Thompson, D.D., ^ Committee.'^ 
Bolivar Christian ; T. J. Kiekpatrick, 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 85 

" As still further exliibiting the state of mind and views 
with which General Lee accepted the position tendered to 
him, an extract will be here made from an address on the 
occasion of his death, by Bishop "VVilmer, of Louisiana, at the 
' University of the South,' Sewannee, Tennessee, where the 
bishop received the sad intelligence. The address is a most 
beautiful and touching tribute to the memory of one whom 
the author loved as a personal friend, as well as admired for 
his exalted virtues. Space can be obtained for only one pas- 
sage directly pertinent to the subject in hand, the use now 
made of which, it is hoped, the author will readily pardon ; 
as also a remark it seems proper to connect with the quota- 
tion, namely, that those who had enjoyed fuller opportuni- 
ties than he had probably possessed, for becoming acquainted 
with the history of Washington College, prior to the recent 
change in its circumstances, will be disposed to claim for it a 
somewhat higher position among the institutions of learning 
in the country than his language would indicate that he had 
done. 

" ' I was seated,' says Bishop "Wilmer, ' at the close of the 
day, in my Yirginia home, when I beheld, through the thick- 
ening shades of evening, a horseman entering the yard, whom 
I soon recognized as General Lee. The next morning he 
placed in my hands the correspondence with the authorities 
of "Washington College at Lexington. He had been invited 
to become president of that institution. I confess to a mo- 
mentary feeling of chagrin at the proposed change (shall I 
say revulsion f) in his history. The institution was one of 
local interest, and comparatively unknown to our people. I 
named others more conspicuous which would welcome him 
with ardor as their presiding head. I soon discovered that 
his mind towered above these earthly distinctions ; that, in 
his judgment, the cause gave dignity to the institution, and 
not the wealth of its endowment, or the renown of its schol- 
ars ; that this door and not another was opened to him by 
Providence ; and he only wished to be assured of his compe- 



86 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

tency to fulfill the trust, and thus to make his few remaining 
years a comfort and blessing to his suffering country. I had 
spoken to his human feelings ; he had now revealed himself 
to me as one " whose life was hid with Christ in God." My 
speech was no longer restrained. I congratulated him that 
his heart was inclined to this great cause, and that he was 
spared to give to the world this august testimony to the 
importance of Christian education. How he listened to my 
feeble words ; how he beckoned me to his side, as the full- 
ness of heart f oimd utterance ; how his whole countenance 
glowed with animation as I spoke of the Holy Ghost as the 
great Teacher, whose presence was required to make educa- 
tion a blessing, which otherwise might be the curse of man- 
kind ; how feelingly he responded, how eloquently, as I nev- 
er heard him speak before — can never be effaced from mem- 
ory ; and nothing more sacred mingles with my reminis- 
cences of the dead.' 

" The Board of Trustees having notified to General Lee 
their entire and cordial agreement with him in the sentiments 
he had expressed in his letter of conditional acceptance, with 
respect to the duties of those charged with the instruction 
of the young in the existing condition of the country, and 
their opinion that his personal relations to the Government of 
the United States did not constitute any obstacle to the pros- 
perity of the college. General Lee at once prepared to enter 
on the duties of the office to which he was chosen. Accord- 
ingly, on the 2d of October (1865), in the presence of the trus- 
tees, professors, and students then on the ground, after solemn 
and appropriate prayer by the Rev. W. S. White, D. D., the 
oldest Christian minister of the town, he took the oath of 
office as required by the laws of the college, and was thus 
legally inaugurated as president. The whole scene was char- 
acterized by a dignity which was rendered the more unpres- 
sive by the absence of the formality and pomp usual on simi- 
lar occasions. 



THE COLLEGE PKESIDENT. 87 

"tHE WORK TO BE DONE BY THE NEW PRESIDENT. 

" It would occupy too much space to exhibit in detail the 
various improvements which were instituted by the president, 
many of which were conducted by himself in person, and all 
under his supervision. The buildings, which had been partial- 
ly repaired from the ravages of war and the waste of years of 
neglect, were to be restored to their former comfort and sight- 
liness ; accommodations for an increased number of students 
and instructors were to be provided ; the apparatus in the 
departments of Chemistry and ]N"atural Philosophy, which 
had been totally destroyed by the soldiers of the Federal 
Army, was to be repaired, with such additions as the prog- 
ress of these branches of science rendered necessary; the 
library, which had been pillaged, and the contents of which, 
when not destroyed or carried out of the State, had been scat- 
tered over the town and its vicinity, and were then in the 
possession of those who, for the most part, felt no interest in 
restoring them to the college, was to be refonned as far as 
possible out of the old materials and enlarged by fresh addi- 
tions ; the scheme of instruction was to be revised and essen- 
tially modified, so as to adapt it more fully to the necessities 
of the times and of the Countiy, and especially to admit of a 
ready incorporation with it of the several new departments 
which were proposed to be added, some forthwith, and others 
as soon as practicable ; and all this with an empty treasury, 
and in a time of financial distress, of social disorders, and po- 
litical turbulence, such as had never before existed in the coun- 
try. The clear, penetrating judgment, and the habits of calm, 
dispassionate forecast for which he was distinguished through- 
out his life of varied experiences, forbade the supposition 
that the president was not fully aware of the magnitude of 
his undertaking, and of the difficulties to be overcome in its 
accomplishment. Quietly he set to work, availing himseK 
of whatever assistance the trastees or professors could afford 
in maturing or in executing his plans. It was a pleasure to 



88 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

any of his associates in these enterprises to offer suggestions 
to him, so ready was he to hsten to them and discuss them 
in all their bearings ; but those approaching him with such 
suggestions usually discovered, before the conversation ended, 
that measures which they supposed were fresh and original 
with themselves, had been thoroughly canvassed by him ; and 
they always learned, then or afterward, that no measure, 
however plausible, or from whatever source it came, would 
be adopted by him until he had carefully examined it in all 
its parts. 

"the changes and mPKOVEMENTS INTKODUCED BY GEN- 
ERAL LEE. 

" In presenting the chief modifications of the instruction 
and government of the college, which were made during the 
administration of General Lee, it is proper to premise that it 
is not possible to determine in every case whether the new 
feature originated with him or was merely approved and 
adopted by him from the suggestions of others. It is, how- 
ever, safe to say that where he was not the immediate author 
of any measure, it would not have been carried into effect 
without his concurrence and the weight of his influence. The 
credit and responsibility for the changes in view as truly be- 
longed to him, as in the affairs of a government they belong 
to the supreme ruler, or, in the conduct of a military cam- 
paign, to the commander-in-chief. 

" Prior to General Lee's presidency, there were five chairs 
of instruction — that of Mental and Moral Science and Political 
Economy, filled by the president, and those of the Latin Lan- 
guage and Literature, of the Greek Language and Literature, 
of Mathematics, and of the Physical Sciences — Chemistry and 
ISTatural Philosophy — filled each by a professor. As General 
Lee had made it a condition of his taking the office that he 
should not be required to teach, but be allowed to devote all 
his time and labors to the superintendency of the institution, 
it became necessary to appoint a professor for the branches 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 89 

which had been in charge of the president. This was done 
soon after his accession ; and, at the same time, three new 
chairs of instruction were instituted and professors elected to 
them, viz. : the chair of Natural Philosophy, embracing, in 
addition to Physics, Acoustics, Optics, etc., the various sub- 
jects of Rational and Applied Mechanics ; the chair of Ap- 
plied Mathematics, embracing the subjects required in Civil 
and Military Engineering, and also Astronomy ; the chair of 
Modem Languages, to which was attached English Philology. 
These four chairs were filled during the first year of General 
Lee's incumbency. Before the close of the second year the 
chair of History and English Literature was also filled. About 
the same time the department of 'Law and Equity' was 
added by attaching to the college the ' Lexington Law School,' 
which had for many years been in successful operation under 
the charge of Judge John W. Brockenbrough, LL. D. A 
few months before his death. General Lee was permitted to 
realize the completion of his plans respecting this depart- 
ment, by the appointment and acceptance of a second Law 
professor. 

" Two other chairs were included in the president's scheme : 
the one, of the ' Enghsh Language,' as a study to receive 
equal attention and honor with the most favored branches of 
instruction ; the other, of ' Applied Chemistry,' in which 
should be taught Metallurgy, and the relations of Chemistry 
to Agriculture, Mining, and Manufactures, together with 
Vegetable and Animal Physiology. 

" Wide as is the range of educational facilities already men- 
tioned, it does not embrace all that the president contem- 
plated. He took the initiatory steps toward the establish- 
ment of a School of Commerce of so thorough and elevated 
a character that a student, while pursuing the branches which 
would impart discipline and culture to the mind, might re- 
ceive special instruction and systematic training in whatever 
pertains to business, in the most enlarged sense of the term. 
It was also his purpose to connect with the college a ' School 



90 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

of Medicine,' a plan for which, with full details, was drawn 
up under his eye, to be kept in readiness until the funds of 
the institution should permit its being earned into effect. 

" It was proper that these various schemes, as well as those 
which the want of the requisite fimds and his death have left 
but partially accomplished, as those which were set in full op- 
eration during his presidency, should have been placed dis- 
tinctly before the reader. Without a knowledge of them, 
the energy General Lee displayed, the labor he performed, 
and his comprehensive views of what is required of an insti- 
tution offering to the public the full advantages of a literary 
and scientific education, cannot be duly appreciated. 

" There is danger, however, that the foregoing recital may 
lead the casual reader into error as to General Lee's conception 
of what constitutes an education, referring here only to its 
intellectual aspects — such as it was his desire and purpose to 
promote in the institution over which he presided. As nearly 
all the new chairs of instruction and plans for further enlarge- 
ment relate to a scientific or a professional education, it might 
be inferred that he did not place an equal value on classical 
studies. No misapprehension would be greater than this, as 
all who had the privilege of being associated with him in 
regulating the studies of the college well understood. Him- 
self acquainted with the ancient languages, Latin and Greek, 
much beyond what is usual with those of his former profes- 
sion, or what might have been expected of one so constantly 
employed as he had been in the kind of public service re- 
quired by that profession, Jie set the highest estimate on them 
as themselves the surest means of a refined mental culture, 
and as affording the soundest mental discipline for successful 
attainments in the studies that should be subsequently under- 
taken. Hence, in cases in which the selection of the studies 
was left to him, unembarrassed by the wishes of parents or 
the circumstances of the pupil, he invariably advised and 
urged a thorough course in the ancient languages. He was 
aware that in this he had the concurrence of the professors in 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 91 

the scientific branches no less than of those in the classical. 
The fact that, when he came to the college, he found the clas- 
sical department competently provided for, explains why his 
attention was directed chiefly to the expansion of those de- 
partments in which deficiencies existed. 

" Yet it is due to candor and to his memory to add, if, in- 
deed, it is necessary after what has already been stated, that 
General Lee was a strong advocate of ' practical education,' 
in the true sense of the phrase — a practical education founded 
on systematic mental discipline and a thorough knowledge of 
the principles and facts of science. This, which is of price- 
less value at all times, he held to be peeuKarly important to 
his own loved South in the present crisis of her affairs. 
In a letter to his esteemed friend and former companion in 
arms, General John B. Gordon, of Georgia (December 30, 
1867), he writes in general terms : ' The thorough education 
of all classes of the people is the most efficacious means, in 
my opinion, of promoting the prosperity of the South ; 
and the material interests of its citizens, as well as their 
moral and intellectual culture, depend upon its accompHshr 
ment. The text-books of our schools, therefore, should not 
only be clear, systematic, and scientific, but they should be 
acceptable to parents and pupils in order to enlist the 
minds of all in the subjects,' And more specifically in a 
letter to a friend in Baltimore engaged in practical science 
(January, 1867) : ' I agree with you fully as to the impor- 
tance of a more practical course of instruction in our schools 
and colleges, which, while it may call forth the genius and 
energies of our people, will tend to develop the resom'ces and 
promote the interests of the country.' 

*' CHANGES m THE SYSTEM OF INSTEUCTION. 

" With the accession of General Lee to the presidency, im- 
portant changes were made in the system of instruction. 
One of these was the substitution of what is known as the 
Elective system for a uniform and compulsory Curriculum. 



93 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

Without discussing the advantages of the one or the other of 
the two methods, it is sufficient to remark hero that the 
change which was introduced was the necessary result of the 
enlarged basis of instruction implied in the addition of the new 
branches and professors just enumerated. The aim was to 
secure, alike in the instruction bj the professor and in the ac- 
quisitions of the student, the highest attainable development. 
Hence, each branch of study was organized into a distinct and, 
in a sense, an independent department or school. Students 
who were prevented, by whatever cause, from pursuing a 
full course, could enjoy the best advantages for a partial 
course in special directions, and receive certificates of profi- 
ciency, degrees or titles corresponding to the character and 
extent of the attainments they should actually make. 

" General Lee, however, was not inattentive to the evils 
that might arise from allowing to students the free, uncon- 
trolled selection of the branches they should pursue. The 
choice accorded to them was restricted to the schools or de- 
partments they were to enter. Within each school a rigid clas- 
sification was made. No student was admitted into a class 
for which he was not prepared, and, when admitted, each was 
required to pursue the prescribed order of subjects. Wlien 
found deficient he was liable to be transferred to a lower 
class, and when prepared he could, at any time, be promoted 
to a higher class, in each case, of the same school ; but no 
promotion was allowed, either at the close of the session or 
dmnng its progress, except on the ground of proficiency actu- 
ally made. By these means the professor in charge of a 
school was enabled to secure an approximation to that which 
all teachers so earnestly desire — uniformity in proficiency 
and progress among the members of each class, so that he 
may adapt his instructions to the ascertained wants of all. 

" GENERAL LEe's MODE OF DISCIPLIlSrE. 

" The next topic to be noticed is the mode of discipline 
adopted and administered by General Lee. For this, it may 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 93 

be said, lie was responsible, in a higher and more exclusive 
sense, than perhaps for any other feature of the college, for it 
was shaped and controlled with little assistance from any 
source. 

" The immediate ends of college disciphne are attention 
to study, and good order as necessary to such diligence. Its 
higher and more comprehensive end is attention to study 
and good order obtained by means which will cultivate virtu- 
ous principles and correct habits, not merely for the brief pe- 
riod of a college course, but also for subsequent life. As 
nothing has occasioned ka much trouble in the management 
of colleges as the discipline, so nothing has yielded so unsatis- 
factory results. Between the two systems which have been 
tried — the one of a control, scarcely nominal in pretense, and 
certainly not more than nominal in reality ; the other charac- 
terized by a multiplicity of petty, artificial ' rules and regu- 
lations,' enforced by vigorous, unremitting espionage — it 
would be difiicult to make a choice, whether one judges by 
the dictates of reason and common-sense, or by the light of 
experience. If the former allows too much license to the un- 
reflecting follies and wayward passions of youth, the latter 
errs on the other extreme by attempting to impose restraints 
which, as on the one hand they can never be effectually 
maintained, assail the young with a temptation to seek to 
elude them, in order to show their independence of spirit, 
their skill and daring ; and which, just so far, on the other 
hand, as they are even partially maintained, chafe the stu- 
dent's pride, excite his disgust, and create in the mind a 
stronger proclivity to the errors and vices they are intended 
to prevent. It will be found, on a careful review of the 
histoiy of colleges in our country, that the larger number 
of the disturbances by which their quiet has been interrupted, 
and sometimes their exercises suspended, have originated in 
such arbitrary, mechanical, and yet impotent regulations. 

"Those who were acquainted with General Lee only 
through the incidents of his public career may have expected 



94 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

that lie would frame the discipline of the college over which 
he presided in accordance with the system pursued at the 
institution (West Point) in which he was educated, and of 
which he was for some years the superintendent, and in ac- 
cordance with the order and practice to which, as a military 
man, he had been so long accustomed. His explanation of 
the reasons for not adopting a discipline so familiar to him, 
and that in his hands would have been so easily administered, 
was, that he did not propose to train men for the army, but 
for the pursuits of civil life, and that, in his view, the disci- 
pline fitted to make soldiers was not best suited to qualify 
young men for the duties of the citizen. Throughout his 
official and his private intercourse with the students, his aim 
was to cultivate in them a nice sense of propriety and a 
strong sense of duty. Hence he treated each one, not as a 
machine to move only as external force should impel it for- 
ward, nor as a delinquent already convicted as such, and 
therefore to be suspected and watched at every step ; but, 
until the contrary should be manifested, as a young gentleman 
of good breeding, veracity, self-respect, and possessing cor- 
rect principles, honorable impulses, and a conscience, with 
whom it was sufficient that right and wrong, duty and obliga- 
tion, should be distinctly made known. Of course, he was 
aware that, in assuming this of every one, he was liable to be 
mistaken in some instances. The effect, however, on the 
minds of all, except the incurably vicious, was most salutary. 
It caused them to feel that they had a character to maintain, 
and inspired them with an ambition to vindicate and strength- 
en the confidence which was reposed in them. Thus, from 
the beginning, it contributed greatly to the end which the 
president kept steadily in view in every disciplinary meas- 
ure he framed or employed — to foster habits of self-control, of 
intelligent self-government, as the result, not of compulsion 
or penalties, but of reflection and choice. On the principle of 
inducing those under his charge to govern themselves by 
giving scope and opportunity to think for themselves, it was 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 95 

his custom to refrain from interposing with any demonstra- 
tion of his wishes or authority as long as it could be done 
with safety. Kever was there a president of a college or 
other ruler who made less display of his oflScial power, or 
seemed to exercise less control. Yet no one, it may be confi- 
dently asserted, ever exerted an influence which was more 
widely and powerfully felt in every department it was de- 
signed to embrace. 

" Before specifying the particular methods emyloyed by 
General Lee to establish and preserve an effectual discipline 
in the college, in accordance with the general principle just 
stated, it is proper to refer to two circumstances which com- 
bined to render the task especially difficult, and should be es- 
timated in determining the degree of credit due him for the 
success he attained. One of these arose from the character 
of a portion of the students who came under his charge. 
They were, indeed, with few if any exceptions, from families 
of respectability, many of them from families of refined cul- 
ture and high social position. But for several years — with 
them the critical years in their moral history — they had been 
exposed to the disastrous effects of the civil war, which, in the 
excitement it created and the exhaustion of the resources of 
the country, disbanded schools, weakened parental authority, 
relaxed family government, and disorganized society to an 
extent that can scarcely be overstated. With the spirit and 
habits such a state of things might be expected to induce in 
the minds of youths under twenty years of age, and without 
time or opportunity for the mitigation of the evil, they were 
sent to college to be reduced to subordination, to regulay ap- 
plication to routine studies, and to a patient endurance of 
the drudgery (as to them it must appear) of such a life. ISTor 
is it a matter of mere suspicion that some of them were 
placed under the charge of General Lee in the forlorn hope 
that his great name and great wisdom might avail for that 
which all other means had failed to accomplish. 

" These remarks, so far as they imply a deterioration of char- 



96 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

acter, are not to be construed as applying to all the students, 
nor even to a majority of tliem. It is a gratifying fact in 
respect to Washington College, as it is believed also to other 
similar institutions of the South since the war, that the most 
of the students have evinced an earnestness of purpose and a 
manly propriety of demeanor never surpassed, if ever equaled, 
in om* country before. This is emphatically true of those of 
them who were personally engaged in active military ser- 
vice. 

" The other circumstance referred to as uniting with that 
just mentioned to render the task before General Lee more 
difficult, originated in the emancipation of the slaves in the 
South. Young men naturally partook deeply of the feelings 
which were almost universal in the class of society to which 
they belonged, that tliis measure was unjust, oppressive, and 
injurious. They were not likely to be as prudent in giving 
utterance to their sense of the wrong as others of more ex- 
perience and self-control. On the other hand, the late slaves, 
suddenly elevated to a position which they had scarcely ven- 
tured to dream would be possible to them, were, as may be 
supposed, greatly elated by the change ; and they too were 
not always as prudent in giving expression to their feelings 
as a cahner judgment would have shown them was best. 
The two inflammable classes being unavoidably brought into 
proximity to each other, it was hardly possible to prevent 
occasional collisions. The danger engaged the most assidu- 
ous attentions of General Lee, especially during the first 
three years of his administration. That so few instances of 
actual violence occurred, is to be ascribed to his untiring energy 
and consummate skill. 

" It is due alike to the students and to the freedmen to say 
that it is believed some, if not all, of the disturbances between 
them would have been avoided, if the latter had been left to 
pursue their usually quiet and inoffensive demeanor, without 
extraneous efforts to poison their minds and embitter their 
feelings toward the whites of the South. Such efforts, how- 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 97 

ever, were made, publicly and privately, by those, or their 
hired emissaries, wjio had constituted themselves the special 
guardians of the freed population of the country. General 
Lee was too conspicuous an object to escape the designs of 
men who were seeking notoriety for themselves — a notoriety 
which might be turned to their pecuniary or political advan- 
tage. As he was shielded from direct attack by the serene 
dignity of his character and his scrupulous attention to all 
his obligations as a member of society and citizen of the 
country, the only way to reach him was through the institu- 
tion over which he presided and to the reputation of which 
he was known to be keenly sensitive. Rumored disorders 
among the students would react on him ; a conflict between 
them and the laws, or the official representatives of the 
Government, would involve him. To no other cause does 
it seem possible to ascribe the numerous false and injuri- 
ous reports that found circulation through the press, of 
improper conduct on the part of the students of ' General 
Lee's College;' the frequent 'official' representations ad- 
dressed to him of rmnored disorderly or unlawful acts which 
they were going to commit, not one of which was ever ascer- 
tained or believed to have been founded in truth ; or the 
complaints made to the authorities, civil or military, as hap- 
pened at the time to be their character, on which, once and 
again, formal commissions were sent to the place to investi- 
gate charges against the students. However frivolous such 
complaints were in themselves, and however groundless he 
believed them to be, whenever they came from a source pos- 
sessing even the semblance of official authority. General Lee 
received them with scrupulous courtesy, and immediately 
took steps to have them thoroughly investigated. The re- 
sults of the inquiry were in every instance creditable alike to 
the president and the students, as was, on more than one oc- 
casion, formally certified by officers of the Government. 
Still, it can readily be seen that the effect of such repeated 
complaints and investigations on the minds of young men 
7 



98 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

"VTOuld be, to provoke tliem to the very course of conduct it 
ought to have been the wish of all to prevent. There were 
instances — not more than two or three in all — in which stu- 
dents were guilty of improper conduct toward the negroes. 
In each case, without any prompting from others, the presi- 
dent, having ascertained the facts, required the offenders to 
leave the college. 

" General Lee bore these annoyances with his accustomed 
equanimity. That they were auned at himself, he was fully 
aware ; but, when any of those with whom he allowed him- 
self to converse on the subject expressed the indignation 
they could but feel at such attempts to harass him and at 
the indignity to which he was subjected in having to deal, 
on even the formal terms of official intercourse, with a class 
of men who were wholly incapable of understanding the 
motives by which he was governed, he would, at one time, 
pass the subject by with some pleasantry, and at another 
would seek to allay the irritation in their breasts by reminding 
them that, in the existing condition of the country, such things 
were perhaps unavoidable, and that it was the duty of all to 
submit patiently to evils for which time was the only cure. 

" While discarding, as has been mentioned, all devices for 
maintaining the discipline of the college which he supposed 
would tend to the degradation of either officers or students, 
and while encouraging, in every possible way, habits of sub- 
ordination, coiTectness of demeanor, and diligent attention to 
study, as the result of their own conviction of duty and re- 
gard for their own reputation, the president, nevertheless, 
exercised a constant \'igilance over the students through 
means which he believed were not only compatible with the 
latter end, but also most effectual in its accomplishment. 
His method of practical operation was simple, and, as the 
results show, effective. 

" As the first step, he sought to become acquainted with 
• each student. He had an office in the college buildings in 
^which he remained, unless called out by public business, from 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 99 

8 o'clock A. M. to 2 P. M., of eacli of six days in the week. 
To this room free access was offered to the students. Here, 
on their arrival at the place, they were expected to report to 
the president in person, and he availed himself, as far as was 
possible, of these earliest interviews, to obtain such knowl- 
edge of the several applicants for admission as would enable 
him to adapt whatever disciplinary appliances might be after- 
ward found advisable to the peculiar circumstances of each 
one. In the large number of students entering tlie institu- 
tion every year, this may be deemed an impracticable task ; 
with ordinaiy men, it would have been such. No one, how- 
ever, who was ever associated with General Lee in the man- 
agement of any enterprise, could fail to observe and admire 
the remarkable tenacity and accuracy of his memory. He 
appeared never to forget any thing, however comparatively 
insignificant, which it was with him a matter of concern to 
remember. Hence, until the last year of his presidency, 
when, on account of his failing health, he was frequently 
absent from his office, he knew every student in the college, 
and would greet each one by name whenever they met. One 
fact, among many others illustrating the point in view, may 
not be out of place. At one of the meetings of the Faculty, 
held, as was the custom, at short intervals, for reviewing the 
roll of the college in order to ascertain whether all the stu- 
dents were attending the required number of lectures, a name 
was read out w^hich was not familiar to his ear. He re- 
quested that it should be repeated, and then repeated it him- 
seK with a slow and heavy emphasis on each syllable, adding 
with evident surprise, not without a tincture of self-reproach : 
'I have no recollection of a student of that name. It is 
very strange that I have forgotten him. I thought I knew 
every one in the college. How long has he been here?' 
Kor would he be satisfied until it was ascertained by an in- 
vestigation that the student had recently entered, and was 
admitted in the president's absence ; so that, in fact, the 
latter had never seen him. 



100 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" This personal acquaintance with them was itseK felt by 
the students as a moral power greatly augmenting the influ- 
ence of the president over them ; when there was added to it 
the effect of the kind words of inquiry, advice, and encour- 
agement, he was wont to address to them, and of the affec- 
tionate, sympathetic, and often playful manner in which 
those words were uttered, when they were admitted into 
college, when they visited him in his office or his residence, 
or when he met them on the lawn or in the streets, it is not 
difficult to understand how their sentiments of reverence and 
admiration for his character would be heightened into love 
for him as a man. It was true — and they felt it to be true — 
that each of them was the object of a solicitude fervent and 
tender, like that of a father or mother. 

" Knowing that idleness is the most fruitful source of 
temptation to the young, the president was peremptoiy in 
requiring that every student should undertake a sufficient 
number of branches to occupy all his time, and that he should 
attend regularly on all the exercises of his several classes. 
Absence from the latter, without a satisfactory reason, was 
held to be a delinquency that called for prompt and decisive 
notice. In order that he might be prepared to give due at- 
tention to every instance of the kind, each professor and 
assistant professor made a weekly report, in tabular form, 
of aU the absences occurring in his classes. The president 
examined these reports with the minutest care, and made 
memoranda of all cases which called for special inquiry. 
The delinquents were then summoned to his office, one by 
one, for a private interview. 

" What took place at these conferences was seldom known, 
except as the student himself might reveal it ; for, unless it 
became necessary from the conduct of the delinquent after- 
ward, the President never alluded to the subject. The young, 
however, with the ingenuousness which is one of their most 
pleasing qualities, are naturally inclined to be communicative ; 
and in this way enough transpired to leave no room to doubt 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 101 

that tlie president's reproofs, admonitions, and counsels, were 
characterized by a pointedness which could not be evaded, 
and, at the same time, with a tenderness and affection none 
but the most hardened could resist. That aspect of indiffer- 
ence and bravado, whether real or affected, so often witnessed 
in the countenance and bearing of students returning among 
their companions from a compulsory interview with the 
authorities of a college, was never seen on the face of one 
leaving General Lee's office ; but, instead, were often exhib- 
ited the unmistakable signs of recent weeping, and always 
those of a spirit that had been subdued by its own emotions. 
Not an instance is known in which a student complained of 
injustice or harshness, or in which the effect on his mind 
was not a profounder respect and affection for the president. 
It was seldom that any thing additional to the penalty, if it 
may be so called, of being cited to one of these interviews, 
was required in order to secure the ends of discipline. In- 
deed, with the great majority of the students it was quite 
sufficient to know that any delinquencies on their part would 
subject them to a notice from the president to see him in his 
office. 

" Still there were cases of neglect of duty which the influ- 
ence of General Lee, exerted in the manner here explained, 
did not avail to correct. After a sufficient number of trials 
to satisfy him that nothing could be hoped for from personal 
admonitions of this character, the parent or guardian was in- 
formed of the fact, and requested to cooperate with the au- 
thorities of the college in a further effort on behaK of the 
delinquent student. This final measure failing, as sometimes, 
though rarely, it did, the parent was requested to withdraw 
his son f ronji the institution, on the grounds that he was spend- 
ing time and money without remunerative benefit, and that 
his example of idleness and irregular attendance on the 
exercises was injurious to his fellow-students. Communica- 
tions of such tenor are unavoidably painful to parents receiv- 
ing them ; they were scarcely less so to the president when 



102 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

making them. Hence lie sought, in every way, to render 
them as kind and tender as possible. He was unwilling, if it 
could be avoided, to send any youth from the college with a 
stigma on his reputation which would injure him in futm^e 
life, and in order to prevent this he gave the parent the op- 
portunity of withdrawing his son when it became necessary 
that the latter should be separated from the institution, rath- 
er than subject him to the disgrace of a formal or public dis- 
mission. Unless, indeed, the student himself or his friends 
at home made it known, the reason for his leaving the col- 
lege would seldom transpire beyond the circle of the parties 
immediately concerned. 

" The following letter, which explains its own design and 
contents, illustrates the manner in which the president dealt 
with a class of cases that sometimes came under his notice : 

"'Lexington, Va., December 12, ISGV. 
" ' My deak Sie : I am glad to inform you that your son ■ 



has made more progress in bis studies during the month of No- 
vember than he did in October, and, as far as I can judge from 
the reports of his professors, he is fully capable of acquiring a 
sound education, provided he will faithfully apply himself. I am 
sorry, however, to state that he has been absent several times 
from his lectures in the month of November. Thirteen times he 
tells me he was prevented from attending by sickness, but five 
times, he says, he intentionally absented himself. He absent- 
ed himself in the same way several times in October; and I 
then explained to him the necessity of punctual and regular 
attendance in his classes, which he promised to observe. 

" ' I have again impressed upon him this necessity, and again 
he promises amendment ; but I have thought it proper to write 
to you on the subject, that you might use your authority with 
him : for I have been obliged to give him to understand that, if 
this conduct is repeated, I shall be obliged to return him to you. 

" ' Hoping that I may be spared the necessity, I remain, 
" ' With great respect, your obedient servant, 

"'R. E. Lee. 

"'To , Esq.' 



TEE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 103 

" In addition to the weekly reports of absences, the pro- 
fessors laid before the president, at the close of every month, 
a tabular exhibit of the standing and grade of each student iu 
his respective classes, as deteniiined by the daily marks given 
in the lecture-room. These also he examined with close atten- 
tion, so as to inform himself of the progress of the students, 
and then passed the reports over to the clerk, to be transferred 
to a permanent register arranged in such a manner as to pre- 
sent, at one view, the standing of every student in each of his 
studies for the month. A copy of the record in the register 
was then forwarded to the parent or guardian of the student. 

" At the close of the two general examinations which were 
held during the annual sessions — the one in the middle and 
the other at the end — similar reports were presented, ex- 
amined, recorded, and forwarded to parents, exhibiting a con- 
spectus of the results and delinquencies for each haK-session ; 
the latter, those also of the entire year. 

" It would be difficult to suggest any method by which 
more particular or complete information could be furnished 
to parents than those frequent and systematized reports sup- 
plied. If, however, there was occasion for any additional 
facts to be stated, the president inserted it with his own hand, 
or signed it when entered under his direction by the clerk. 
Especially at the close of the session, when on a review of the 
year's work it was seen that some of the students were enti- 
tled to special commendation for their deportment and profi- 
ciency, and that others, although they had not failed in their 
studies to an extent that rendered their withdrawal from the 
college necessary during the session, had not made such prog- 
ress as to afford ground for the hope that their longer con- 
tinuance in it would result in advantages to them commensu- 
rate with the expenditures of time and money it would in- 
volve, letters in his own hand, or with his signature, were ad- 
dressed to the parents, setting forth the views of the presi- 
dent and the professors in relation to the individuals compos- 
ing the one class or the other. 



104 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" The labor involved in tlie system of discipline was very 
great ; but General Lee tliouglit it necessary to the faithful 
discharge of the trust he had assumed. He did not shrink 
from it, nor complain of it. He seemed never to have over- 
looked any thing. When the members of the Faculty assem- 
bled in his office to lay before him the reports for the week 
just closed, he was invariably found prepared to receive them, 
having disposed of all the business which those of the week 
before had imposed on hun, and being now in full and cheer- 
ful readiness for any work, though much of it was sheer 
drudgery, which the new reports might require. Was such 
an amount of irksome labor necessary ? He believed — and 
often so expressed himself — that it was. He felt that too 
much vigilance and care could not be bestowed on those who, 
in the most critical period of their lives, had been committed 
to his charge, in holding them up to the regular discharge of 
their duties. He felt too, that the utmost candor and particu- 
larity were due from him to the parents who had intrusted 
him with the oversight of their sons. Having discarded, as 
already stated, all secret appliances for maintaining an espion- 
age over the students, he felt that it was the more incumbent 
on him to exercise, with all possible promptness and regu- 
larity, the open, manly method of discipline which he had 
substituted for it. 

" As allusion has been made to the frequent complaints 
made to General Lee of acts of disorder which it was rumored 
the students had committed, or were about to commit, it inay 
be well to insert here a specimen of the replies and addresses 
to which such complaints gave rise. The following letter to 
an officer of the Government requires no introduction : 

" * Washington College, Lexington, Va., November 20, 1868. 

"'Colonel: I have received your letter of the 19th inst., 
which gave me the first intimation I had received of the proposed 
meeting of the colored people of Lexington. 

" ' The Faculty and students of the college to whom the subject 
has been mentioned, were equally ignorant of the contemplated 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 105 

assembly ; and I do not think the students have any intention 
of disturbing the meeting. 

" ' Every thing, however, in our power will be done by the 
Faculty as well as myself to prevent any of the students attend- 
ing ; and I heartily concur with you in the hope that the peace 
and quiet of the community may at all times be preserved. 
" ' I have the honor to be, with much respect, 

" ' Your obedient servant, 
" ' Colonel R. E. Lee. * 

" That he might leave no part of his duty unperformed, the 
president issued the following address to the students, and 
had it posted on the bulletin-board, so as to be seen by all of 
them: 

" ' Washington College, November 20, 1868. 

" ' It has been reported to the Faculty of Washington College 
that some of the students have threatened to disturb a public 
meeting of the colored people of Lexington, to be held at the 
Fair Grounds this evening, the 20th inst. 

" ' It is not believed that the students of this college, who have 
heretofore conducted themselves in such an exemplary manner, 
would do any thing to disturb the public peace, or bring dis- 
credit on themselves or the institution to which they belong ; but 
it is feared that some, prompted by curiosity, or a desire to wit- 
ness the proceedings, may be present. The president, therefore, 
requests all students to abstain from attending this and all simi- 
lar meetings ; and thinks it only necessary to call their attention 
to the advantages of attending strictly, as heretofore, to their 
important duties at the college, and of, in no way, interfering 
with the business of others. From past experience they may 
feel certain that, should any disturbance occur, eiForts will be 
made to fix the blame on Washington College. It therefore be- 
hooves every student to keep away from all such assemblies. 
« ' Respectfully, 

" * R. E. Lee, President of Washington College* 

" Two other of his addresses are here inserted, as illustrat- 
ing further the president's method of operating on the minds 



106 EEMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

of the students either for the pm*pose of reproving them for 
improper acts they had committed, or for preventing snch as 
he apprehended they might commit. The first relates to 
one of the occurrences so well known to all who reside in 
' college-towns,' which, originating in a mere desire for harm- 
less sport, through the excitement that is generated in their 
progress, frequently culminate in real annoyances to the com- 
munity. One such having taken place in Lexington, and the 
students being suspected of participating in it. General Lee 
issued the following address, which, after being read out in the 
chapel at the morning service, was posted on the bulletin-board: 

"'Washington Collegk, November 26, 1866. 

" ' The Faculty desire to call the attention of the students to 
the disturbances which occurred in the streets of Lexington on 
the nights of Friday and Saturday last. They believe that none 
can contemplate them with pleasure, or can find any reasonable 
grounds for their justification. These acts are said to have been 
committed by students of the college, with the apparent object 
of disturbing the peace and quiet of a town whose inhabitants 
have opened their doors for their reception and accommodation, 
and who are always ready to administer to their comfort and 
pleasure. 

" ' It requires but little consideration to see the error of such 
conduct, which could only have proceeded from thoughtlessness 
and a want of reflection. The Faculty therefore appeal to the 
honor and self-respect of the students to prevent any similar oc- 
currence, trusting that their sense of what is due to themselves, 
their parents, and the institution to which they belong, will be 
more efi'ectual in teaching them what is right and manly, than 
any thing they can say. 

" ' There is one consideration connected with these disorderly 
proceedings, which the Faculty wish to bring to your particular 
notice : the example of your conduct, and the advantage taken 
of it by others to commit outrages for which you have to bear 
the blame. They therefore exhort you to adopt the only course 
capable of shielding you from such charges — the effectual pre- 
vention of all such occurrences in future. 

" ' R. E. Lee, President of Washington College.^ 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 107 

" The second of the addresses referred to was published to 
the students the day preceding Christmas. The pertinency 
of it will be recognized by all who are familiar with the cus- 
toms which prevail in the South. Prior to General Lee's 
connection with the college, a recess had always been given 
at Christmas, of not less than eight or ten days. Coming in 
the midst of the session, this was at best a serious interrup- 
tion to the exercises. But the evil was much aggravated by 
the fact that those students who visited their homes, seldom 
retm-ned promptly at the close of the recess ; and those who 
spent the recess at the college, being released from the obH- 
gation to attend lectures, and having at their command time 
they knew not how to dispose of, became the readier victims 
to the temptations that so abound at that season of the year. 
During General Lee's presidency, the recess was limited to 
one or two days. The f oUowmg brief addi*ess will show what 
means he employed to guard the students against the dan- 
gers to which he knew they would be exposed : 

" ' Washington College, Va., December 24, 1869. 
" ' Academic exercises will be suspended from the 25th to the 
27th inclusive, to enable the students to join in the rites and 
services appropriate to the occasion ; and, while enjoying these 
privileges with grateful hearts, all are urged to do or counte- 
nance nothing which may disturb the peace, harmony, and happi- 
ness, that shovild pervade a Christian community. 

" ' R. E. Lee, President: 

" It seems proper here to remark, with reference to the 
foregoing addresses, or, as the students familiarly styled 
them, 'general orders,' and to others of similar character 
issued from time to time as there was occasion for them, that 
in no instance did they fail to accomplish the end which the 
president desired. Indeed, it would have been almost im- 
possible for any student to have withstood the moral senti- 
ment they created among the students at large. 



108 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

"general lee's efforts on behalf of religion. 

" In other parts of this volume, the religious character of 
General Lee is brought prominently into view. It will here 
be referred to only as it respects his efforts on behalf of the 
religious welfare of the students. 

" The passage cited, in the early part of this sketch, from 
the address of Bishop Wilmer, and several incidents men- 
tioned in the other portions of the volume, show that he 
assumed the position of presiding officer in the institution 
with the profoundest convictions of its responsibilities in 
view of the influence it would enable him to exert in mould- 
ing the characters and forming the habits of the young men 
under his charge, in those higher aspects of both which per- 
tain to religion. The same convictions characterized his 
administration to its close. 

" Seeing, during the first year, that the chapel of the col- 
lege would not afford accommodations for the number of 
students who might be expected to attend the institution, he 
urged the immediate erection of another and separate build- 
ing, to be devoted to religious purposes. There were many 
objects calling for a far greater outlay of money than the 
resources of the college permitted ; but he regarded this as 
of paramount importance, and accordingly others were held 
in abeyance to its prior claims. He chose the site for the 
new chapel, in front of the row of the other buildings and 
facing them, in order that it might occupy the more con- 
spicuous position. The plan of the house was drawn by him- 
self or under his eye, in a style of architecture plain indeed, 
but still more attractive than that of the other buildings, 
that even this incidental honor might be given to it. Owing 
to the deficiency of funds necessary for its completion, the 
progress of the work was retarded much beyond his expecta- 
tions, but this seemed only to increase his interest in the 
enterprise. He gave it his personal superintendence, from 
the first to the last, visiting it every day, and frequently 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 109 

several times in the day. When, at length, the house was 
finished, it was opened, under his special direction, for reli- 
gious worship by appropriate services conducted by the pas- 
tors of the several churches in the town. This was the first 
of a series of public exercises, extending through five days, 
which were connected with the annual commencement of the 
college, and it was observed by all present that none of the 
exercises which followed those of the ' chapel dedication ' 
seemed to awaken in his mind a more lively sensibility or to 
afford him a more heart-felt gratification. Thereafter, as 
indeed had been previously the case, no religious service 
whether that of daily worship on the part of the professors 
and students, or occasional worship of a more general charac- 
ter, was evef held in the chapel, at which he was not present, 
unless when absent from home or prevented by sickness. He 
thus gave to the students every day an example of the value 
he attached to religion. 

" In the basement of this edifice on which he bestowed so 
much attention, and in which he so often mingled with the 
professors and students in acts of divine worship, his mortal 
remains now repose. There it is proposed to erect a mauso- 
lemn, and deposit such other tributes to his name as shall 
pei-petuate the memory of his great services to the college, 
and of the veneration and love of his countrymen for his 
character and deeds. By the authority of the Board of 
Trustees the entire building has been consecrated as a ' Me- 
morial Chapel.' 

" At an early period of General Lee's connection with the 
college, the students who were communicants in the church, 
formed an association among themselves for the cultiva- 
tion of personal piety, and as the means of exerting a favor- 
able influence on others. Coming from diiierent parts of 
the country and from different religious communions, it was 
seen to be desirable that they should be drawn together and 
united in the fellowship of those great doctrines, liopes, and 
aims, which were common to them all. Thus they would the 



110 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

sooner become acquainted with one another; the timid 
among them would be encouraged the more distinctively to 
avow their Christian profession ; opportunities would be the 
more readily afforded for devotional exercises, at times and 
under circumstances best suited to their needs ; and such of 
them as might be qualified by age or experience for engaging 
in efforts for the religious welfare of others, through Simday- 
schools and devotional meetings held in the destitute neigh- 
borhoods in the vicinity of the college, could prosecute their 
labors with the greater system and efficiency. 

" It is not known whether General Lee was the first to 
propose the organization of this society in "Washington Col- 
lege ; but, if he did not suggest it, he gave it a warm and ac- 
tive encouragement from its inception. From every source 
accessible to him, he sought, in advance, minute information 
as to the best form of organization, and the most effective 
methods of carrying out its designs. He made to its funds 
an annual contribution in money, and always a liberal one. 
On at least one occasion he placed in its library a collection 
of suitable books, which he had purchased with that view. 
In his annual reports to the Board of Trustees, he always made 
emphatic mention of the association, and gave a particular 
account of its operations and progress, as data indicating the 
religious condition of the college, and as constituting in part 
the groimds of his confidence respecting its future pros- 
perity. 

" There being no regular chaplain of the college, the pas- 
tors of the several churches in the town kindly consented, at 
General Lee's request, to hold religious services every morn- 
ing in the chapel, under such a division of the time as they 
found most convenient to themselves. The four largest de- 
nominations in the country had each a church, with its pas- 
tor, in the place, so that this arrangement precluded all ob- 
jection on the score of sectarian partiality or advantage. It 
also offered to each of the students, with perhaps not two 
exceptions out of a hundred of them, the satisfaction of at- 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. HI 

tending, for one fourtli of the time, on devotional exercises 
conducted by a minister of the church of his parents or of 
his own preference. A special advantage resulting from it, 
and one that the president sought in every possible way to 
render effective, was, that it created a tie between the minis- 
ters and the students similar to that subsisting between a pas- 
tor and his spiritual charge. This was, indeed, the idea he 
endeavored to impress on both of the parties. Hence he in- 
vited the ministers to visit the students freely in their rooms, 
and advised the students to become members of the Bible- 
classes and to attend the different services conducted by the 
ministers. The following letter, which is only one of several 
of the same import that might be inserted, will best exhibit 
his views on this subject : 

'"Washington College, Lexington, Ya., September 11, 1869. 

" ' RevereJid and dear Sirs : Desirous of making the reli- 
gious exercises of the college advantageous to the students, and 
wishing to use all means to inculcate among them the principles 
of true religion, the Faculty tender to you their cordial thanks 
for your past services, and request you to perform in rotation 
the customary daily exercises at the college chapel. The hour 
fixed for these services is forty-five minutes past seven o'clock 
every morning, except Sunday, during the session, save the 
three winter months, December, January, and February, when 
the hour for prayer will be forty-five minutes past eight. The 
hours for lectures are fixed at eight and nine o'clock respectively 
during these periods. On Sundays the hour for prayer during 
the whole session is fixed at nine o'clock. 

" ' The Faculty also request that you will extend to the stu- 
dents a general invitation to attend the churches of their choice 
regularly on Sundays and other days ; and invite them to join 
the Bible-classes established in each ; that you will, as may be 
convenient and necessary, visit them in sickness and in health ; 
and that you will in every proper manner urge upon them the 
great importance of the Christian religion. 

" ' The Faculty further asks that you will arrange among 
yourselves, as may be most convenient, the periods of the ses- 



112 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

sion during which each will perform chapel services, and that 
during those periods the officiating minister will consider him- 
self chaplain of the college, for the purpose of conducting reli- 
gious worship, prayers, etc. 

'" The present session will open on the 16th inst., and close 
on the 25th of June, 1870. 

" ' I am, with great respect, your obedient servant, 

" ' R. E. Lee. 

" ' To the ministers of the Baptist, Episcopal, Methodist, and Presbyterian 
Churches in Lexington, Va.' 

" In order that the minister might be enabled the more 
effectively to carry out the pious designs set forth in the fore- 
going letter, General Lee was accustomed to inquire of each 
student, when entering the college, to what religious denomi- 
nation his parents belonged, or what church they usually at- 
tended. He would then, as far as practicable, introduce the 
student to the pastor of the same denomination in the town, 
and thus from the beginning seek to impress the student with 
the conviction that he might enjoy in the college pastoral 
privileges similar to those he had enjoyed in the home of his 
parents. On some occasions, he was known to make a memo- 
randum of the denominations from which the new students 
came, and to furnish the ministers respectively with a list of 
such as he desired they should take under their special charge. 

" No public worship, except the morning prayers referred 
to in the foregoing letter, was held in the chapel on the Sab- 
bath. Had the income of the college permitted the employ- 
ment of a permanent chaplain, it would have been impracti- 
cable to have such service except at an hour which would have 
brought it into conflict with the public services of one or more 
of the churches in the town ; and this would have obliged a 
portion of the students to absent themselves either from the 
worship in the chapel, or from that of the church which their 
parents or themselves preferred they should attend. Lodg- 
ing, as the most of them did in private families, in all parts 
of the town, it was quite as convenient for them to attend the 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 113 

latter as the former. It was believed, also, that they would 
derive more profit and would be under more wholesome re- 
straints from worshiping with the members of the commu- 
nity in which they resided, and of the families in which they 
were domiciled, in the church and under the minister of their 
own preference, than in the chapel where the assembly would 
consist almost exclusively of their fellow-students, and where 
it would be almost impossible to divest themselves of the im- 
pression that it was still but a college duty on which they 
were attending. If required by the authorities of the insti- 
tution to be present at the chapel on the occasion of such 
worship, they would feel aggrieved that they were not per- 
mitted to unite with the congregation of their own persuasion. 
If not so required, they would, for many and obvious reasons, 
attend the church instead of the chapel, and leave the latter 
meagrely supplied with worshipers. Besides, a distinct ser- 
vice in the chapel would have gone far to defeat the object 
the president had so much at heart — the establishment and 
growth of a pastoral sympathy and obligation between the 
ministers of the town and the students of the college. 

" As would naturally be inferred from what has been stated 
respecting the method -i hich General Lee pursued in adminis- 
tering the discipline of the college, it was his constant aim to 
secure from the students a regular attendance on religious 
services through a conviction of duty, and an experience of 
the benefits and enjoyment derived from them, rather than 
by the interposition of authority and penalties. And truly 
it may be said that he found much in the results of his policy 
to confirm his opinion of its propriety, as these results were 
developed from year to year under his eye. It is doubtful 
whether any measures, compulsory in reality or in appearance, 
that could have been adopted, would have secured so large 
and imiform an attendance on public worship. Certainly, 
they would not have secured an attendance so favorable to 
the highest spiritual benefit. The demeanor of the students 
during worsliip was characterized by so much decorum, and 
8 



114 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

evinced so deep an interest in tlie services, as to have been 
the subject of frequent remarks alike by citizens and stran- 
gers — it presented so striking a contrast to what they had 
been accustomed to witness among the same class, when under 
the operation of a different management. The reader will 
find a full confirmation of these remarks in the following 
extract from General Lee's last Annual Report to the Board 
of Trustees, dated the 21st of June, 1870 : 

" ' Prayers have been offered every morning in the college 
chapel by clergymen of the different denominations in Lex- 
ington, who volunteered at the beginning of the session to 
perform this service in rotation. The students were in this 
way introduced to their acquaintance, and were invited to at- 
tend the churches of their preference, and to join Bible-classes 
organized in each for their instruction. They are thus early 
surrounded by favorable influences which in many cases end 
in the happiest results. The Young Men's Christian Associ- 
ation of the college continues to prosper, and is productive 
of much good. There are eighty-eight members of the asso- 
ciation this year. There is an assembly for prayer every 
night, and a general prayer-meeting once a week. A Sabbath- 
school house has been built near House Mountain by the as- 
sociation, and a Sunday-school organized near Thorn Hill. 
Fifty students are engaged in teaching in Sunday-schools and 
Bible-classes. There are twenty-one candidates for the min- 
istry in the college this year, and one hundred and nine 
church-members, nineteen of whom have joined the churches 
in Lexington during this session. A general and active re- 
ligious feeling exists among the students, and missionary- 
meetings are held once a month.' 

" The following brief letter, so characteristic of the writer 
in the beauty and comprehensiveness of its diction, will form 
a fitting close to the subject now in hand : 

" 'Lexington, September 19, 1867. 
" ' My dear Sir : I beg you will accept my sincere thanks for 
the beautiful Bible which you have presented to me — a book 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 115 

which supplies the place of all others, and one that cannot be re- 
placed by any other. I will place it in the chapel of Washington 
College, as you desire, where I trust its simple truths will be 
daily learned and thoroughly appreciated by all the students. 

" ' Very respectfully, R. E. Lee. 

" ' Colonel F. R. Faiieak.' 

" Much might be said and many facts cited in illustration 
of General Lee's invariable courtesy and kindness to those 
who were associated with him in the daily conduct of the 
college, of his delicate consideration for their feelings and 
convenience, and of his special regard to whatever might 
tend to uphold and strengthen their influence over the stu 
dents. Of all tliis, and of the many acts of his unselfish de- 
votion to the institution which they witnessed and in whose 
benefits they themselves largely shared, they will carry with 
them to their graves the most tender and gTateful recollec- 
tions. But these things are of a nature to be laid up and 
cherished in the sanctuary of their own bosoms. It is scarcely 
proper to expose them to the eye of the public. 

" There is, however, one fact in his ofiicial relations to the 
college that presents an aspect of his character it would not 
seem right to conceal. Dm'ing the last winter of his presi- 
dency, his health began to decline in a way that excited 
alarm among his friends. They privately urged him to lay 
aside his work and try the effect of travel and a sojourn in a 
warmer latitude. With his wonted gentleness of manner, 
and yet with a tone indicating a firmness of purpose not to 
by mistaken, he declined to adopt their advice. The pro- 
fessors, suspecting that his reluctance arose from an unwill- 
ingness by his absence to impose additional labor and respon- 
sibility on them, united in a formal request to the same pur- 
port, accompanying the request with a scheme for so distrib- 
uting the duties of his office among themselves that, for the 
month or two of his absence, no onerous burden would de- 
volve on any of them, and no serious detriment result to 
the college. He saw that his compliance would gratify them. 



116 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

and he yielded without further objection. During his ab- 
sence, the Board of Trustees convened, and detennined that 
the time had come for distinctly announcing to him a pur- 
pose they had previously formed — that of providing a home 
for his family, with an annuity for their support. They re- 
garded this as a simple act of justice — a debt they owed him 
of far higher sanction than any mere legal obligation could 
confer. His response to the announcement appears in the 
following letter written after his retm*n from the South : 

"'Washington College, Ya., May 28, IS'ZO. 
" ' Eon. John W. Brockenbkough, Rector Washington College, Va. 

"'My deae Sir: I received with feelings of deepest grati- 
tude the resolutions of the Board of Trustees of Washington 
College, at their meeting on the 19th ult. The warm sympathy 
expressed at my sickness, and the cordial approval of my ab- 
sence, rendered more grateful to me the generous provision for 
the support of my family. Though fully sensible of the kind- 
ness of the Board, and justly appreciating the manner in which 
they sought to administer to my relief, I am unwilling that my 
family should become a tax to the college, but desire that all 
its funds should be devoted to the purposes of education. I 
know that my wishes on this subject are equally shared by my 
wife, and I therefore request that the provisions of the fourth and 
fifth resolutions, adopted at the session of the 19th of April, may 
not be carried into effect. I feel full assurance that, in case a 
competency should not be left to my wife, her children would 
never suffer her to want. 

" ' With my warmest gratitude for the consideration of the 
Board of Trustees and my special thanks for the kind manner in 
which you have communicated to me their action, 

" ' I am, with the highest respect, your obedient servant, 

« ' R. E. Lee.' 

" With reference to the subject of the foregoing letter, it 
is only necessary to state that the Board of Trustees, in terms 
of the utmost respect and delicacy, declined to recede from 
the position they had taken, and thus the matter stood at the 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 117 

time of General Lee's death. But Mrs. Lee, catching the 
spirit of her illustrious husband, always declined the annuity 
until her lamented death settled the question. 

"Another letter from General Lee must be given. It 
places in a strong light the same aspect of his character which 
is exhibited in the one just inserted. But it does far more. 
It reveals more clearly and deeply the inner man in several 
of its most striking traits, than any thing that has yet been 
published from his pen. It sets forth his views of the 'great 
needs of the institution to which he devoted the anxieties 
and labors of the last five years of his life and proposed to 
devote aU of whatever years, few or many, Providence should 
allot to him. It breathes the spirit of pure and enlightened 
patriotism — the true love of country — for which the wise 
and good of the land admired him while living and now 
revere his memory. It answers the question which has so 
often been asked by his loving countrymen : ' Was General 
Lee contented and happy in the position and employments of 
his latter days ? ' It is doubted whether in the whole range 
of epistolary literature any thing can be found that tells 
more in the same compass, and tells it more beautifully. The 
distinguished gentleman to whom the letter is addressed, 
and who is honored by the expressions of confidence and 
affection it contains, has since passed to his reward, and 
there is, therefore, no impropriety in copying the letter in 
fuU from the private letter-book of the writer, 

" ' Washington College, Lexington; Va., March 3, 1868. 
" ' My dear General : I have just seen a letter from Gen- 
eral Lilly, stating that you had given five hundred dollars to the 
endowment of Washington College, with the condition that it 
be applied to increasing my salary. This generous donation on 
your part was not necessary to convince me of the lively inter- 
est you retain for the institutions of your native State, or of 
your friendly consideration for myself. I fully appreciate the 
kind motives which prompted you thus to appropriate it. But, 
when I tell you that I already receive a larger amount from the 



118 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

college than my services are worth, you will see the propriety 
of my not consenting that it should be increased. 

" ' The great want of the college is more extensive buildings, 
suitable libraries, cabinets, philosophical and chemical appara- 
tus, etc. A liberal endowment will enable it to enlarge the 
means of its usefulness, to afford the facilities of education to 
worthy young men who might not otherwise obtain one, and, as 
we must look to the rising generation for the restoration of the 
country, it can do more good in this way than in any other. 

" ' I hope, now that your care and toils are over, that your 
health, under the pleasing influences of your present life, has 
been greatly improved. For my own part, I much enjoy the 
charms of civil life, and find too late that I have wasted the best 
years of my existence. 

" ' I beg that you will remember me most kindly to Mrs. 

Ewell, Mrs. Turner, and Major Brown; and believe me, truly, 

"' Your friend, R. E. Lee. 

" ' General R. S. Ewell.' " 

The other paper to wliicli allusion is made above was 
prepared by the facile pen of Prof. Edward S. Joynes, 
and ' was published, soon after General Lee's death, in the 
University Monthly. Although touching on some of the 
points presented by Dr. Kirkpatrick, it will be read with 
deep interest, especially by those in any way connected with 
the great cause of education : 

" . . . . General Lee accepted the presidency of Washing- 
ton College, in the first place, from a profound and deliber- 
ate sense of duty. The same high principle of action that 
had characterized his conduct in the gravest crises of public 
affairs, marked his decision here ; .and here, as ever, duty 
alone determined his choice. There was absolutely nothing 
in this position that could have tempted him. Not only was 
it uncongenial with all the habits of his past life, and remote 
from all the associations in which he had formally taken 
pleasure ; but it was, at that time, most uninviting in itself. 
The college to which he was called was broken in fortune 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 119 

and in hope. The war had practically closed its doors. Its 
buildings had been pillaged and defaced, and its library scat- 
tered. It had now neither money nor credit, and it was 
even doubtful whether it would be shortly reopened at all 
for the reception of students. The Faculty were few in 
number, disorganized, and dispirited. Of the slender endow- 
ment that had survived the war, hardly any thing was avail- 
able, and ready money could not be secured even for the 
most immediate and pressing wants of the college. Under 
these circumstances the offer of the presidenc}^ to General 
Lee seemed wellnigh presumptuous; and sm-ely it was an 
offer from which he had nothing to expect either of fortune 
or of fame. The men, however, who had made this election, 
the Trustees of "Washington College — ever honored be their 
memory for their noble conception ! — had not calculated 
in vain in their estimate of General Lee's character. They 
felt that his position, however humble it might seem, would 
afford to him what from their knowledge of the man they 
felt would be the most acceptable to him — a sphere of duty, 
in which he could spend his days in the service of his beloved 
people ; and. though the country looked on astonished and 
incredulous, the result showed that they had not been mis- 
taken. 

" General Lee received the announcement, which was 
conveyed to him in person by the rector, Hon. John "W. 
Brockenbrough, with surprise and with deep feeling. He was 
at first disposed to decline the offer ; but the distinguished 
Virginian who represented the trustees urged it upon him, 
and dwelt earnestly upon the high motives which had 
prompted their choice. These were motives to which Gen- 
eral Lee could not be indifferent ; and at last, reserving his 
answer, he promised to reflect upon the subject. Here, as 
ever, he was deliberate as well as conscientious. Finally, 
after several days' consideration, he accepted the position. 
Suffice it to say here that it was a deliberate sense of duty to 
his fellow-countrymen, and a desire to pay back, as far as he 



130 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

could, througli their sons, the sufferings and sorrows of his 
own generation in the South, that determined his decision. 
He had already fully resolved not to leave Virginia under 
any circumstances ; and this position, humble as it seemed to 
be, gave him the wished-for opportunity of laboring for her 
people, and for the South. Therefore he accepted it. 

" The profound sense of duty which marked General Lee's 
acceptance of this office, characterized also his whole adminis- 
tration of it. He entertained the prof oundest convictions on 
the importance of educational influences, both to individuals 
and to the country, and the deepest sense of personal respon- 
sibility in his own office. He felt that an institution like 
Washington College owed duty, not only to its own students, 
but to the whole country ; and that its moral obligations were 
not only supreme within its own sphere, but were attached to 
the wider interests of public virtue and of true religion, among 
all the people. Everybody around him felt unconsciously 
that he was actuated by these principles, and all were im- 
pressed by his high conceptions of duty, and the singleness of 
his devotion to it. IS^othing else, indeed, could have sustained 
him ^0 serenely through so many and so constant details of 
labor and of trial. Nothing else, in such a man, could have 
held his thoughts so high or kept his heart so strong, in the 
midst of daily tasks, always so severe, often so trivial and 
discouraging. But he never flagged ; and, though he fully 
comprehended the difficulties of his office, and was often 
wearied with its incessant labors, no word of despondency 
fell from his lips. He felt that he was doing his duty. ' I 
have,' he said, as reported by the Hon. Mr. Hilliard, ' a self- 
imposed task, which I cannot forsake ; ' and in this spirit he 
met all the details of his daily labors cheerfully to the last. 
Again and again, during his life at Lexington, were tempting 
offers urged upon him — offers of large income, with com- 
parative ease and more active and congenial employment ; 
but, though he fully appreciated these considerations, and 
was not indifferent to the attractions presented by such 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 121 

offers, he turned from them all, with the same reply. He 
had chosen his post of duty, and he clung to it. Year by 
year the conception of his duty seemed to grow stronger with 
him ; and year by year, the college, as its instrument and 
representative, grew dearer to him. And as, gradually, the 
fruits of his labors began to be manifest, and the moral and 
intellectual results of his influence approved themselves even 
to his own modest self-estimate, his heart grew only warmer, 
and his zeal more earnest in his work. 

" His sense of personal duty was also expanded into a 
warmer solicitude for all who were associated with him. 
To the Faculty he was as an elder brother, beloved and 
revered, and full of all tender sympathy. To the students 
he was as a father, in carefulness, in encouragement, in 
reproof. Their weKare, and their conduct and character as 
gentlemen, were his chief concern ; and this solicitude was not 
limited to their collegiate years, but followed them abroad 
into life. He thought it to be the office of a college not 
merely to educate the intellect, but to make Christian men. 
The moral and religious character of the students was more 
precious in his eyes even than their intellectual progress, and 
was made the special object of his constant personal solicitude. 
In his annual reports to the trustees, which are models of 
clear and dignified composition, he always dwelt with pecul- 
iar emphasis upon these interests ; and nothing in the col- 
lege gratified him more than its marked moral and religious 
improvement during his administration. To the Rev. Dr. 
"White he said, as affectingly narrated by that venerable min- 
ister soon after his death : * I shall be disappointed, sir — I 
shall fail in the leading object that brought me here, unless 
these young men all become consistent Christians.' Other 
expressions, bearing eloquent witness to the same truth, 
might be quoted ; but none could be more eloquent than the 
steady tenor of his own life, quietly yet constantly devoted 
to the highest ends of duty and of religion. 

" Such were the principles which actuated General Lee, 



122 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, 

as President of Wasliington College ; and their effects showed 
themselves in all the details of his administration. In the 
discipline of the college his moral influence was supreme. 
A disciplinarian, in the ordinary sense of the term, as it is 
often most unworthily applied, he was not. He was no 
seeker-out of small offenses, no stickler for formal regulations. 
In the construction of college rules, and in his dealing with 
actions generally, he was most liberal ; but in his estimate of 
motives, and in the requirement of principle and honor, he 
was exacting to the last degree. Youthful indiscretion 
found in him the most lenient of judges ; but falsehood or 
meanness had no toleration with him. He looked rather to 
the principles of good conduct than to mere outward acts. 
He was most scrupulous in exacting a proper obedience to 
lawful authority ; but he was always the last to condemn, 
and the most just to hear the truth, even in behalf of the 
worst offender. Hence in the use of college punishment he 
was cautious, forbearing, and lenient ; but he was not the less 
firm in his demands, and prompt, when need was, in his 
measures. His reproof was stern, yet kind, and often even 
melting in its tenderness ; and his appeals, always addressed 
to the noblest motives, were irresistible. The hardiest 
offenders were alike awed by his presence, and moved, often 
even to tears, by his word ; aud there was no student who 
did not dread a reproof from General Lee more than every 
other punishment. In all his official action, and indeed in all 
his intercourse with the students, he looked to the elevation 
of the tone of principle and opinion among themselves, as 
the vital source of good conduct, rather than to the simple 
repression of vice. His discipline was moral rather than 
punitive. Hence there were few cases of dismission, or other 
severe punishment, during his administration ; and hence, 
also, the need for such punishments became ever less and less. 
The influence of this policy, aided especially by the mighty 
influence of his personal character, was all-powerful. The 
elevation of tone, and the improvement in conduct, were 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 123 

steady and rapid. Immediately after tlie war, the yomig 
men of the South were wild and . unrestrained, and acts of 
disorder were frequent ; in the latter years of his administra- 
tion hardly a single case of serious discipline occurred. We 
doubt, indeed, whether at any other college in the world so 
many young men could have been found as free from mis- 
conduct, or marked by as high a tone of f eehng and opinion, 
as were the students of Washington College during these 
latter years of General Lee's life. The students felt tliis, and 
were proud of it ; and they were proud of themselves and of 
their college, as representatives of the character and influence 
of Lee. 

" Yet not the less was he rigidly exacting of duty, and 
scrupulously attentive to details. By a system of reports, 
weekly and monthly — almost military in their exactness — 
which he required of each professor, he made himself acquaint- 
ed with the standing and progress of every student in every 
one of his classes. These reports he studied carefully, and 
was quick to detect shortcomings. He took care, also, to 
make himself acquainted with each student personally, to 
know his studies, his boarding-house, his associations, dis- 
position, and habits ; and, though he never obtruded this 
knowledge, the students knew that he possessed it, and that 
his interest followed them everywhere. Nor was it a moral 
influence alone that he exerted in the college. He was equally 
careful of its intellectual interests. He watched the progress 
of every class, attended all the examinations, and strove con- 
stantly to stimulate both professors and students to the high- 
est attainments. The whole college, in a word, felt his 
influence as an ever-present motive, and his character was 
quietly yet irresistibly impressed upon it, not only in the 
general working in all its departments, but in all the details 
of each. 

" Of this influence. General Lee, modest as he was, was 
perfectly aware, and, like a prudent ruler, he husbanded it with 
a wise economy. He preferred to confine his direct interposi- 



124 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

tion to purely personal acts ; and rarely, and then only on criti- 
cal occasions, did he step forward to present himself before the 
whole l>ody of students in the full dignity of his presidential 
office. On these occasions, which in the latter years hardly 
ever occurred, he would quietly post an address to the stu- 
dents, in which, appealing only to the liighest principles of 
conduct, he sought to dissuade them from threatened evU. 
These addresses, which tlic boys designated as his ^general 
orders^ were always of immediate efficacy. No single cas3 
ever occurred in which they failed of instant and complete 
effect ; and no student would have been tolerated by his fel- 
low-students who would have dared to disregard such an ap- 
peal from General Lee. . . . 

" General Lee was also most laborious in the duties of his 
office as a college president. He gave himself wholly to his 
work. lTisoc(!upations were constant, almost incessant. lie 
went to his office daily at eight o'clock, and rarely returned 
home nntil one or two. During this time, he was almost 
incessantly engaged in college matters, giving his personal 
attention to the minutest details, and always ready to receive 
visitors on college business. It has sometimes been sneer- 
ingly alleged that General Lee was only a figure-Jwad :it 
Washington College, kept there merely for the attraction of 
his splendid name. Never was slander more false ; for it 
was a slander upon him, more even than a slur upon the 
college. Never was a college president more laborious than 
he. He gave all his powers entirely to his work. Though 
al)ly assisted by subordinate officers, whom he well knew how 
to employ, he yet had an eye for the supervision of every 
detail. The buildings, the repairs, the college walks and 
grounds, the wood-yard, the mess-hall, all received his atten- 
tion, and a large portion of his time was given to the purely 
business affiiirs of the college. His office was always open 
to students or professors, all of whose interests received his 
ready consideration. His correspondence meanwhile was 
very heavy, yet no letter that called for an answer was ever 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 125 

neglected. It has heen recently stated by an editor that, to a 
circular letter of general edueali(jnal interest, addrefised l)y 
him to a large number of college preHidents, General Lee was 
the only one that replied ; yet he was the greatest and per- 
haps the busiest of them all. In addition to tho formal 
circulars, which he always revised and signed himself, his 
correspondence with the parents and guardians of students 
was intimate and explicit, on every occasion that required 
such correspondence. Many of these letters are models of 
beautiful composition and noble sentiment. . . . 

" But General Lee was not only earnest and laljorious, 
he was also able, as a college president, lie was perfectly 
master of the situation, and thoroughly wise and skillful in 
all its duties of organization and of policy, as well as (jf detail. 
To this let the results of his administration l^ear testimony. 
He found the college practically bankrupt, disorganized, 
deserted ; he left it rich, strong, and crowded with students. 
It was not merely numbers that he brought to it, for these 
his great fame alone would liave attracted ; he gave it 
organization, unity, energy, and practical success. In enter- 
ing upon his presidency, he seemed at once fully to compre- 
hend the wants of the college ; and its history during tlie 
next five years was but the development of his plans and the 
reflection of his wise energy. And these plans were not 
fragmentary, nor was this energy merely an industrious zeal. 
lie had from the beginning a distinct ^o^*cy, which he had 
fully conceived, and to which he steadily adhered ; so that all 
his particular measures of progress were but consistent steps 
in its development. His object was nothing less than to 
establish and perfect an institution which should meet the 
highest needs of education in every department. At once, 
and without waiting for the meana to be provided in advance, 
he proceeded to develop this oliject. Under liis advice new 
chairs were created, and i>rofessors called to fill them ; so 
that, before the end of the first year, the Faculty was doubled 
in numl^ers. Still additional chairs were created, and finally 



126 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

a complete system of scliools was established and brongbt 
into full operation. To these schools, or distinct departments, 
each one of which was complete in itself and under the in- 
dividual control of its own professor, he gave a compact 
and unique organization into a system of complete courses, 
with corresponding diplomas and degrees, which, securing 
the perfect distinctness and responsibility of each school, 
gave a perfect unity to them all. These courses were so 
adapted and mutually arranged, under their common organi- 
zation and his general control, as to escape alike the errors of 
the pm-ely elective system on the one hand and of the close 
curriculum on the other, and to secm'e, by a happy com- 
promise, the best advantages of both. So admirably was 
this plan conceived and administered by General Lee that, 
heterogeneous as were the students, especially in the earlier 
years, each one found at once his proper place, and all were 
kept in the line of complete and systematic study. Under 
this organization, and especially under the inspiration of his 
central influence, the utmost harmony and the utmost energy 
pervaded all the departments of the college. The highest 
powers of both professors and students were called forth, 
under the fullest responsibility. The standards of scholar- 
ship were rapidly advanced; and soon the graduates of 
"Washington College were the acknowledged equals of those 
from the best institutions elsewhere, and were eagerly sought 
after for the highest positions as teachers in the best schools. 
These results, which, even in the few years of his administra- 
tion, had become universally acknowledged throughout the 
South, were due, directly and immediately, more than to all 
other causes, to the personal ability and influence of General 
Lee as president of the college. 

" General Lee's plans for the development of "Washington 
College were not simply progressive ; they were distinct and 
definite. He aimed to make this college represent at once 
the wants and the genius of the country. He fully realized 
the needs of the present age, and he desired to adapt the 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 127 

education of the people to their condition and their destiny. 
He was the ardent advocate of complete classical and literary 
culture. Under his influence, the classical and literary schools 
of the college were fully sustained. Yet he recognized the 
fact that material well-being is, for a people, a condition of all 
high civilization, and therefore, though utterly out of sym- 
pathy with the modern advocates of materialistic education, 
he sought to provide all the means for the development of 
science, and for its practical applications. He thought, indeed, 
that the best antidote to the materialistic tendencies of a 
purely scientific training was to be found in the liberalizing 
influences of literary culture, and that scientific and pro- 
fessional schools could best be taught when surrounded by 
the associations of a literary institution. He sought, there- 
fore, to establish this mutual connection, and to consolidate 
all the departments of literary, scientific, and professional 
education under a common organization. Hence, at an 
early day, he called into existence the Schools of Applied 
Mathematics and Engineering, and of Law, as part of the 
collegiate organization ; and, later, he submitted to the trus- 
tees a plan for the complete development of the scientific 
and professional departments of the college, which will ever 
remain as an example of his enlarged wisdom, and which has 
anticipated, by many years, we fear, the practical attainments 
of any school in this country. In addition to all the other 
reasons for mourning the death of Lee, it is to be deeply re- 
gretted, not only for Washington College, but for the sake 
of the education of the country, that he did not live to com- 
plete his great designs. Had he done so, he would probably 
have left behind him an institution of learning which would 
have been a not less illustrious monument of his character than 
his most brilliant military achievements. As it is, Wash- 
ington College, henceforth forever associated with his name, 
will also be inseparably associated with the memory of his 
noble influence and of his wise and far-sighted plans. Had 
this been the profession of his life. General Lee would have 



128 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

been not less famous, relatively, among college presidents 
tlian lie is now among soldiers. Now^ after having won, in 
other fields, a world-wide fame, he has, in this last labor of 
his life, displayed an ability and developed a power for the 
highest achievements, such as form no small part of the 
fame even of his distinguished career. 

" Such, briefly and imperfectly sketched, was General Lee 
as a college president. And surely this part of his life de- 
serves to be remembered and commemorated by those who 
hold his memory dear. In it he exhibited all those great 
qualities of character which had made his name already so 
illustrious ; while, in addition, he sustained trials and sorrows 
without which the highest perfections of that character could 
never have been so signally displayed. This life at Washing- 
ington College, so devoted, so earnest, so laborious, so full of 
far-reaching plans and of wise and successful effort, was 
begun under the weight of a disappointment which might 
have broken any ordinary strength, and was maintained, in 
the midst of public and private misfortune, with a serene pa- 
tience, and a mingled firmness and sweetness of temper, that 
give additional brilliancy evej;i to the glory of his former fame. 
It was his high privilege to meet alike the temptations and 
perils of the highest stations before the eyes of the world, and 
the cares and labors of the most responsible duties of private 
life, under the most trying circumstances, and to exhibit in 
all alike the qualities of a great and consistent character, 
founded in the noblest endowments, and sustained by the 
loftiest principles of virtue and religion. It is a privilege 
henceforth for the teachers of our country that their pro- 
fession, in its humble yet arduous labors, its great and its 
petty cares, has been illustrated by the devotion of such a 
man. It is an honor for all our colleges that one of them is 
henceforth identified with the memory of hisaame and of his 
work. It is a boon for us all ; an honor to the country, 
which in its whole length and breadth will soon be proud to 
claim his fame ; an honor to human nature itself, that this 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 129 

great character, so often and so severely tried, has thus ap- 
proved itself consistent, serene, and grand, alike in peace and 
in war, in the humblest as well as in the highest offices. 
Among the monuments which shall perpetuate his fame, not 
the least honorable will be that which shall commemorate his 
life at Washington College ; and among the materials out of 
which the historian shall construct his future biography, not 
the least interesting, we are sure, will be the simple record of 
these last years of silent but subhme labor — of peaceful yet 
noble and far-reaching aspiration — in behalf of liis beloved 
and suffering people of the South." 

I will add to these sketches of those who helped him in 
his work, that, as I was permitted to see, during five years, 
the daily effects of his power in the college — the skill with 
which he managed its affairs, and the enthusiasm with which 
he inspired all who came in contact with him, until he had 
one of the hardest-working Faculties, and one of the most 
orderly, studious bodies of young men in the country — I was 
impressed with the conviction that he was not only the best 
soldier, but also the hest college jpresident, whom this country 
has ever produced. 

The following incidents may be given as illustrating an 
important fact stated above by Dr. Kirkpatrick. Happening 
in his office one day, I heard a visitor inquire how a certain 
student was getting on, when President Lee promptly replied : 
"He is a very quiet, orderly young man, but seems very 
careful not to injure the health of his father's son. He got 
last month only forty on his Greek, thirty-five on his Mathe- 
matics, forty-seven on his Latin, and fifty on his English, 
which is a very low stand, as one hundred is our maximum. 
Now, I do not want our young men to really injure their 
health ; but I wish them to come as near it as possible." 

Yery much surprised at his being able, without reference 

to memoranda, to thus give the class-standing of one out of 

four hundred students, I related the incident to one of the 

prof essors, and asked if tliis was not an isolated case. He 

9 



130 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

replied that the general could not, of course, always recol- 
lect the exact " class-mark " of every student, but that he 
never failed to know the general standing of a student, and 
would frequently say, when a name was called at the Faculty 
meeting, " He does his Mathematics pretty well, but is neg- 
lecting his Latin and Greek ; " or, " He is making good prog- 
ress in the languages, but is deficient in his Mathematics and 
the sciences." Upon one occasion, when a certain name was 
called. General Lee remarked, " I am sorry to see that he has 
fallen back so far in his Mathematics." " You are mistaken, 
general," said the professor ; " he is one of the very best men 
in my class." " He only got fifty-four last month," was the 
reply, and upon looking at the consolidated report it was 
found that there had been a mistake in copying, and that 
General Lee was correct according to the record. 

As a fitting conclusion to this chapter, the following 
extract from an eloquent sermon, preached in the Citadel 
Square Baptist Church, Charleston, S. C, by Eev. Dr. E. T. 
"Winkler, may be subjoined : . . . 

" When I seek to penetrate into the mind of our great 
leader, to understand how he, who failed to save the country 
by the sword, still hoped to save its laws, its institutions, its 
customs, its sciences, its letters, its magistracies, its altars — 
all that has been overwhelmed by a fierce and tumultuous 
democracy — I admire the simple and noble expedient to 
which he resorted. General Lee established new claims to 
the reverence of his countrymen when he exchanged the 
camp for the college, and the sword for the pen. 

"Men have praised his modest retirement to scholastic 
retreats when the war was over, his silence amid political 
clamors, his labors in failing health, his devotion to the in- 
terests of peace, and virtue, and religion. How few realize 
that, in the quiet hall of the lecturer and professor, he re- 
newed the war, transferring it to the sphere of mind ! A 
year before his death, Washington hberally endowed the 
college that bears his name in Lexington, a town situated on 



THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT. 131 

the higli western bank of North River, a little over a hun- 
dred miles from Richmond. The Yirginia Military Institute 
is there, where Stonewall Jackson taught, and there is that 
lamented warrior's grave. There his commander now re- 
poses. 

" ' They were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than 
lions. Lovely and pleasant in their lives, in their deaths 
they are not divided.' Lexington is the parable of the great 
Virginia soldiers. In that quiet scholastic retreat, in that 
city set upon a hill and crowned with martial trophies, they, 
being dead, yet speak. Richmond desires his body. It is 
natural that the metropolis he defended so bravely, and so 
long, should yearn for that mighty presence. But the re- 
moval of his remains from Lexington would obscure the final 
lesson of his career. At Lexington the Southern leader in- 
trenched himself upon the battle-field of intelligence, and 
gathered around him the ardent youth of a new generation, 
and the spirits of the illustrious dead, for the redemption of 
his conquered country. Lexington is the capital upon the 
column, otherwise incomplete, of an harmonious and beauti- 
ful patriotism. 

" The earthworks he erected are fast disappearing. The 
fields he glorified by his valor have wept away the stains of 
heroic blood, and are now robed as with a golden vesture in 
the yellow autumnal grain. The cause for which he con- 
tended is lost. Yet the great character is immortal, and the 
great Issson remains. O ye, in whose service that perfect 
mechanism was worn out, for whom he endured sleepless 
nights, watchful days ; for whom he planned and marched ; 
for whom he encountered exposm-es, and perils, and privation, 
and combats, until defense after defense of Nature was car- 
ried, and the citadel of life was assailed, and the spotless sword 
was surrendered to the grim conqueror, revere that last leg- 
acy, so simple, as coming from the war-worn soldier : Take 
care of your institutions of learning; Esteem education, 
mental, moral, and religious, as the only bulwark of the 



132 EEMINISOENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

republic. Regard ser\dce and sacrifice, not as the means of 
success, but as the true glory of life. And think of man- 
liness as attaining its noblest elevation when it bows before 
the cross of Jesus Chi'ist. 

" As David composed ' The Song of the Bow,' to celebrate 
the glory of that warrior king who had checked the invaders 
of Palestine, and at last fell upon the memorable mountains 
of Gilboa, so will the people of this land, for countless gener- 
ations, celebrate the memory of the consummate soldier who 
resisted the overwhelming flood of om- enemies, and guarded 
for years the vast bulwarks of our countiy, until, battle-spent, 
he died — a nobler chief than Saul — a hero adorned with reh- 
gion, and vindicating his country less by his prowess than by 
his pure virtues. Favored land, which has produced so rare 
a spirit, which encircles by its boundaries the fields of his 
shining valor, which has so long beheld a monument to the 
glory of religion in the person of her most honored son! 
Favored land, where the echoes of his prayers still linger, 
after the trumpets of his charging squadrons have died away ! 
Favored land, where the laurels, and the standards, and the 
spoils of war lie low before the Mercy-Seat ! Favored land, 
where the spirit of her greatest son is expressed in the in- 
spired ascription of old : ' ISTot unto us, O Lord, not unto us, 
but unto Thy name give glory ! ' " 



CHAPTER III. , 

DUTY THE KEY-NOTE OF HIS LIFE. 

If asked to name in a single word the controlling prin- 
ciple of General Lee's life, we should unhesitatingly answer, 
DUTY. Whether as a youth meeting his obligations to his aged 
mother, and passing through the Military Academy without 
a single demerit ; or serving in the United States Army ; or 
directing the forces of his native South ; or quietly working 
in the college at Lexington for the good of the young men 
of the country — duty was the star which guided him through- 
out his eventful career. The letter which has been so wide- 
ly published, purporting to have been written by General 
Lee at Arlington to his son Custis at "West Point, is unques- 
tionably spurious. But the expression, "Duty is the sub- 
limest word in the English language," did occur in a letter 
to his son, and it is very certain that he regulated his own life 
by this noble sentiment. 

General Magruder related a characteristic incident, which 
was thus given by the Norfolk Virginian : 

" After the fall of Mexico, when the American army was 
enjoying the ease and relaxation which it had bought by 
toil and blood, a brilliant assembly of officers sat over their 
wine, discussing the operations of the siege, and indulging 
hopes of a speedy return to the United States. 

" One among them rose to propose the health of the cap- 
tain of engineers, who had found a way for the army within 



134 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

the city ; and then it was remarked that Captain Lee was ab- 
sent. Magruder was dispatched to bring him to the hall, 
and, departing on his mission, at last found the object of his 
search in a remote room of the palace, busy on a map, 

" Magruder accosted his friend, and reproached him for 
his absence. 

" The earnest worker looked up from his labors with a 
calm, mild gaze, which we all remember, and, pointing to his 
instruments, shook his head. 

" ' But,' said Magruder, in his impetuous way, ' this is 
mere drudgery ! Make somebody else do it, and come with 
me.' 

" ' ISTo,' was the reply — ' no, I am but doing my duty.' " 

We give, in his own words, an incident related by ex- 
President Jefferson Davis, in his address at the Lee Memo- 
rial Meeting held in Richmond, November 3, 18Y0 : 

" An attempt has been made to throw a cloud upon his 
character because he left the army of the United States to 
join in the struggle for the liberty of his State. Without 
entering into politics, I deem it my duty to say one word 
in reference to this charge. Virginian born, descended from 
a family illustrious in the colonial history of Virginia, more 
illustrious still in her struggle for Independence, and most 
illustrious in her recent effort to maintain the great prin- 
ciples declared in 1776, given by Virginia to the service of 
the United States, he represented her in the Military Acad- 
emy at West Point. He was not educated by the Federal 
Government, but by Virginia ; for she paid her full share 
for the support of that institution, and was entitled to de- 
mand in return the services of her sons. Entering the army 
of the United States, he represented Virginia there also, and 
nobly performed his duty for the Union of which Virginia 
was a member, whether we look to his peaceful services as 
an engineer, or to his more notable deeds upon foreign fields 
of battle. He came from Mexico crowned with honors, 
covered by brevets, and recognized, young as he was, as one 




Eo Eo [L E Ep 

S A YOUN& OFFICER 



DUTY THE KEY-NOTE OF HIS LIFE. 135 

of the ablest of his country's soldiers. And to prove that he 
was estimated then as such, not only by his associates, but by 
foreigners also, I may mention that when he was a captain 
of engineers, stationed in Baltimore, the Cuban Junta in 
New York selected him to be their leader in the revolution- 
ary effort in that island. They were anxious to secure his 
services, and offered him every temptation that ambition 
could desire, and pecuniary emoluments far beyond any 
which he could hope otherwise to acquire. He thought the 
matter over, and, I remember, came to Washington to con- 
sult me as to what he should do. After a brief discussion of 
the complex character of the military problem which was 
presented, he turned from the consideration of that view of 
the question, by stating that the point on which he wished 
particularly to consult me was as to the propriety of enter- 
taining the proposition which had been made to him. He 
had been educated in the service of the United States, and 
felt it wrong to accept place in the army of a foreign pow- 
er, while he held his commission. Such was his extreme 
delicacy, such the nice sense of honor of the gallant gentle- 
man we deplore. But when Yirginia — the State to which 
he owed his first and last allegiance — withdrew from the 
Union, and thus terminated his relations to it, the same nice 
sense of honor and duty, which had guided him on a former 
occasion, had a different application, and led him to share her 
fortune for good or for evil." 

It cost General Lee a severe struggle to leave the old 
army. He had never been a politician, but was ardently at- 
tached to the Union, and earnestly opposed to secession as a 
remedy for the grievances of the South. 

Besides his published utterances, a few extracts from his 
private letters to his wife will abundantly show this. From 
" Camp Cooper, on the Clear Fork of the Brazos," under 
date of " August 4, 1856," he writes as follows :"...! hope 
your father enjoyed his usual celebration of the 4th of July. 
My 4th was spent (after a march of thirty miles) on a 



136 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

brancli of the Brazos, under my blanket, wliieli was elevated 
on four sticks driven in the ground as a sun-shade. The sun 
■was fierj hot, the atmosphere like the blast from a hot-air 
fm-nace, the water salt; still mj feelings for my country 
were as ardent, my faith in her future as true, and my hopes 
for her advancement as unabated, as if called forth under 
more propitious circumstances." Under date of " December, 
1856," he writes from Fort Brown, Texas : 

" . . . . We get plenty of papers, but all of old dates. 
Things seem to be going on as usual in the States. Mr. Bu- 
chanan, it appears, is to be our next President. I hope he 
will be able to extinguish fanaticism North and South, culti- 
vate love for the country and Union, and restore harmony 
between the different sections. . . ." 

He wrote as follows on the eve of the great catastrophe 
which was to drench the land in blood : 

"Fort Mason, Texas, January 23, 1861. 
" I received Everett's ' Life of Washington ' which you sent 
me, and enjoyed its perusal. How his spirit would be grieved 
could he see the wreck of his mighty labors ! I will not, how- 
ever, permit myself to believe, until all ground of hope is gone, 
that the fruit of his noble deeds will be destroyed, and that 
his precious advice and virtuous example will so soon be for- 
gotten by his countrymen. As far as I can judge by the papers, 
we are between a state of anarchy and civil war. May God avert 
both of these evils from us ! I fear that mankind will not for 
years be sufficiently Christianized to bear the absence of restraint 
and force. I see that four States have declared themselves out 
of the Union ; four more will apparently follow their example. 
Then, if the border States are brought into the gulf of revolution, 
one half of the country will be arrayed against the other. I must 
try and be patient and await the end, for I can do nothing to 
hasten or retard it. . . . " 

Under the same date, he wrote thus to his son : 

" The South, in my opinion, has been aggrieved by the acts 
of the North, as you say. I feel the aggression, and am willing 



DUTY THE KEY-NOTE OF HIS LIFE, I37 

to take every proper step for redress. It is the principle I con- 
tend for, not individual or private benefit. As an American 
citizen, I take great pride in my country, her prosperity and in- 
stitutions, and would defend any State, if her rights were in- 
vaded. But I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country 
than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of 
all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice every 
thing but honor for its preservation, I hope, therefore, that all 
constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to 
force. Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our 
Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and for- 
bearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards 
and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every mem- 
ber of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for ' perpetual 
union,' so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment 
of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved 
by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention as- 
sembled. It is idle to talk of secession. Anarchy would have 
been established, and not a government, by Washington, Ham- 
ilton, Jefi'erson, Madison, and the other patriots of the Revolu- 
tion. . . . Still a Union that can only be maintained by swords 
and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the 
place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me. I shall 
mourn for my country and for the welfare and progress of man- 
kind. If the Union is dissolved, and the Government disrupted, 
T shall retrun to my native State and share the miseries of my 
people, and save in defense will draw my sword on none." 

Three weeks after this letter was written, lie received or- 
ders " to report to the commander-in-chief at Washington," 
and hastened to obey the summons — ^reaching there on the 1st 
of March, just three days before the inauguration of President 
Lincoln. Here lie had the strongest pressure brought to bear 
upon him to induce him to side with the TTorth in the impend- 
ing struggle. G-eneral Scott, who had been his warm personal 
friend, and to whom he was most sincerely attached, used all 
of his powers of persuasion to induce him to " stand by the 



138 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

old flag." "We have the authority of Hon. Montgomery Blair 
for saying that the supreme command of the United States 
Army was offered him by Mr. Lincoln. He knew that in the 
Southern Army several other officers (by a law already passed 
by the Confederate Congress) would rank him. He appreci- 
ated, as few others did, the magnitude of the war which was 
about to burst forth, the fearful odds against which the South 
would contend, and the uncertainty of the issue. His beauti- 
ful home at Arlington, around which clustered so many hal- 
lowed associations, must fall within the Federal lines, and he 
must lose his splendid estate if he sided with the South. 
But " none of these things moved him " — his only desire was 
to know that he might walk the path of duty. 

To Mr. Lincoln's messenger (the elder Blair) he said: 
" Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned 
the four millions of slaves in the South, I would sacrifice them 
all to the Union — but how can I draw my sword upon Yir- 
ginia, my native State ? " To all of General Scott's entreaties 
he made similar replies ; and when on the 17th day of April, 
1861, the Virginia Convention (which had stood firm in its 
adherence to the Union, and exhausted every means of pacifi- 
cation), in reply to Mr. Lincoln's call for troops to coerce the 
seceded States, passed its ordinance of secession and called 
upon the sons of Virginia to rally to her standard, the course 
of R. E. Lee was decided. 

He turned his back upon wealth, rank, and all that a 
mighty nation could offer him, severed the strong ties which 
bound him to the " old service " and his brother officers, and 
offered his stainless sword to his mother-State. 

The following letter to General Scott explains the feel- 
ings with which he left the United States Army : 

" Arlington, Va., April 20, 1861. 
" General : Since my interview with you on the 18th in- 
stant, I have felt that I ought not longer to retain my commis- 
sion in the army. I therefore tender my resignation, which I 
request you will recommend for acceptance. It would have 



DUTY THE KEY-NOTE OF HIS LITE. 13 9 

been presented at once, but for the struggle it has cost me 
to separate myself from a service to which I have devoted all 
the best 3'ears of my life, and all the ability I possessed. 

" During the whole of that time — more than a quarter of a 
century — I have experienced nothing but kindness from my su- 
periors, and the most cordial friendship from my comrades. To 
no one, general, have I been as much indebted as to yourself 
for uniform kindness and consideration, and it has always been 
my ardent desire to meet your approbation. I shall carry to the 
grave the most grateful recollections of your kind consideration, 
and your name and fame wiU always be dear to me. 

" Save in defense of my native State, I never desire again 
to draw my sword. Be pleased to accept my most earnest 
wishes for the continuance of your happiness and prosperity, and 
believe me most truly yours, R. E. Lee." 

To a sister in Baltimore be wrote as follows, under the 
same date as the above : 

" My deab Sister : I am grieved at my inability to see you. 
... I have been waiting for a more ' convenient season,' which 
has brought to many before me deep and lasting regret. We 
are now in a state of war which will yield to nothing. The 
whole South is in a state of revolution, into which Virginia, 
after a long struggle, has been drawn ; and though I recognize 
no necessity for this state of things, and would have forborne 
and pleaded to the end for redress of grievances, real or sup- 
posed, yet in my own person I had to meet the question whether 
I should take part against my native State. With all my devcn 
tion to the Union, and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an 
American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to 
raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I 
have, therefore, resigned my commission in the army, and save 
in defense of my native State — with the sincere hope that my 
poor services may never be needed — I hope I may never be 
called upon to draw my sword. 

" I know you will blame me ; but you must think as kindly of 
me as you can, and believe that I have endeavored to do what I 



140 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

thought right. To show you the feeling and struggle it has 
cost me, I send a copy of my letter of resignation. I have no 
time for more. . . . 

" May God guard and protect you and yours, and shower 
upon you everlasting blessings, is the prayer of 

" Your devoted brother, 

« R. E. Lee." 

Immediately upon his arrival in Richmond, the Governor 
nominated him to the chief command of the Virginia forces, 
and the convention unanimously confirmed the nomination. 
On the 23d of April he was enthusiastically received by the 
convention, and their president (the venerable John Janney) 
made him an eloquent address of welcome, concluding as 
follows : 

" Sir, we have by this unanimous vote expressed our con- 
victions that you are at this day, among the living citizens of 
Yirginia, ' first in war.' We pray to God most fervently 
that you may so conduct the operations committed to your 
charge that it may soon be said of you that you are ' first in 
peace ; ' and when that time comes, you will have earned the 
still prouder distinction of being ' first in the hearts of your 
countiymen.' 

" Yesterday your mother, Yirginia, placed her sword in 
your hand, upon the impKed condition, that we know you 
will keep to the letter and in spirit, that you will draw it 
only in defense, and that you will fall with it in your hand 
rather than that the object for which it was placed there shall 
fail." 

General Lee replied with characteristic modesty and said : 
"Mr. President and gentlemen of the Convention — Pro- 
foundly impressed with the solemnity of the occasion, for 
which I must say I was not prepared, I accept the position 
assigned me by your partiality. I would have much pre- 
ferred had your choice fallen upon an abler man. Trusting 
in Almighty God, an approving conscience, and the aid of my 
fellow-citizens, I devote myseK to tiie service of my native 



DUTY THE KEY-NOTE OF HIS LIFE. 141 

State, in whose beliaK alone will I ever again draw my 
sword." 

Men may differ as to the rightfulness of the course on 
which General Lee decided; but no one who knew him 
could ever doubt that he acted from the highest conviction 
that he was but doing his duty. 

The following letter will be a valuable contribution to 
history, not only as giving General Lee's own version of the 
important events mentioned, but also as refuting certain mis- 
representations of him which have been widely circulated : 

"Lexington, Va., February 25, 1868. 
" Hon. Eeveedt Johnson, U. 8. Senate, Washington^ D. C. 

" My dear Sie : My attention has been called to the oflB- 
cial report of the debate in the Senate of the United States of 
the 19th instant, in which you did me the kindness to doubt the 
correctness of the statement made by the Hon. Simon Cameron 
in regard to myself. I desire that you may feel certain of my 
conduct on the occasion referred to, so far as my individual 
statement can make you. 

" I never intimated to any one that I desired the command 
of the United States Army, nor did I ever have a conversation 
but with one gentleman, Mr. Francis Preston Blair, on the sub- 
ject, which was at his invitation, and, as I understood, at the 
instance of President Lincoln. 

" After listening to his remarks, I declined the offer he 
made me, to take command of the army that was to be brought 
into the field, stating, as candidly and as courteously as I could, 
that, though opposed to secession and deprecating war, I could 
take no part in an invasion of the Southern States. 

" I went directly from the interview with Mr. Blair to the 
office of General Scott ; told him of the proposition that had 
been made to me, and my decision. 

" Upon reflection after returning to my home, I concluded 
that I ought no longer to retain any commission I held in the 
United States Army, and, on the second morning thereafter, I 
forwarded my resignation to General Scott. 

" At the time, I hoped that peace wotJd have been pre- 



14:2 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

served ; that some way would have been found to save the 
country from the calamities of war ; and I then had no other in- 
tention than to pass the remainder of my life as a private 
citizen. 

" Two days afterward, upon the invitation of the Governor 
of Virginia, I repaired to Richmond, found that the convention 
then in session had passed the ordinance withdrawing the State 
from the Union, and accepted the commission of commander of 
its forces which was tendered me. 

" These are the simple facts of the case, and they show that 
Mr. Cameron has been misinformed. 

" I am, with great respect, your obedient servant, 

" R. E. Lee." 

But it is proper to add that, when his course was once 
decided upon, he never faltered, and never for a moment 
regretted his decision, or doubted that he was treading the 
path of duty. 

In June, 1868, when speaking to his trusted lieutenant — 
the gallant and accomplished General Wade Hampton — of the 
war and its results, and of the part he bore in it, he said, with 
emphasis : " I did only what my duty demanded / I could have 
taken no other course without dishonor. And if all were to 
J)e done over again, I should act in precisely the same niatv- 
nerr 

In reference to General Lee's views and feelings at the 
breaking out of the war. Bishop Joseph P. B. Wilmer, of 
Louisiana, in a memorial address, testifies as follows : 

" In what temper of mind he entered this contest, I can 
speak with some confidence, from personal interviews with 
him soon after the commencement of hostilities. ' Is it 
yom' expectation,' I asked, ' that the issue of this war will be 
to perpetuate the institution of slavery % ' 

" ' The future is in the hands of Providence,' he replied, 
' but, if the slaves of the South were mine, I would surren- 
der them all without a struggle, to avert this war.' 

" I asked him, next, upon what his calculations were based 



DUTY THE KEY-NOTE OF HIS LIFE. 143 

in so unequal a contest, and how lie expected to win success ; 
was lie looking to divided counsels in the North, or to for- 
eign interposition ? His answer showed how little he was 
affected by the hopes and fears- which agitated ordinary 
minds. ' My reliance is in the help of God.' 

" ' Are you sanguine of the result i ' I ventured to in- 
quire. ' At present I am not concerned with results, God's 
will ought to be our aim, and I am quite contented that his 
designs should be accomplished and not mine.' " 

And so, all through that great contest (in the hour of vic- 
tory and the hour of defeat alike), he seemed animated only 
by a desire to do Ms duty, whatever others might think. 

This is illustrated by an incident of the surrender, re- 
lated by Colonel C. S. Tenable, a gallant and accomplished 
member of his personal staff, in his address at the Lee Me- 
morial Meeting in Kichmond, November 3, 1870 : 

"At three o'clock on the morning of that fatal day, 
General Lee rode forward, still hoping that we might break 
through the countless hordes of the enemy which hemmed us 
in. Halting a short distance in rear of our vanguard, he 
sent me on to General Gordon to ask him if he could break 
through the enemy. I found General Gordon and General 
Fitz Lee on their front line in the dim light of the morn- 
ing, aiTanging an attack. Gordon's reply to the message (I 
give the expressive phrase of the gallant Georgian) was this : 
' Tell General Lee I have fought my corps to a frazzle, and I 
fear I can do nothing unless I am heavily supported by Long- 
street's corps.' When I bore this message back to General 
Lee, he said : ' Then there is nothing left me but to go and 
see General Grant,* and I would rather die a thousand 
deaths.' Convulsed with passionate gi'ief, many were the 
wild words which we spoke, as we stood around him. Said 
one, ' O general, what will history say of the surrender of 

' Field's and Mahone's Divisions of Longstreet's corps, stanch in the 
midst of all our disasters, were holding Meade back in our rear, and could not 
be spared for the attack. 



144 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

the army in the field ? ' He replied : ' Yes, I know they 
will say hard things of us ; they will- not understand how 
we were overwhelmed by numbers ; but that is not the 
question, colonel; the question is, is it right to sm-render 
this army? If it is right, then /will take all the responsi- 
bility.' 

" Fellow-soldiers, though he alone was calm, in that hour 
of humiliation the soul of our great captain underwent the 
throes of death for his grand old army surrendered, and for 
his people so soon to lie at the mercy of the foe ; and the 
sorrows of this first death at Appomattox Court-House, with 
the afilictions which fell upon the devoted South, weighed 
upon his mighty heart to its breaking, when the welcome 
jnessenger came from God to translate him to his home in 
heaven." 

One day in 1866 the writer was conversing with General 
Lee in reference to certain results of the war, when he said, 
very emphatically : " Yes ! all that is very sad, and might be 
a cause of self-reproach, hut that we are conscious that we 
ha/ve humbly tried to do our duty. We may, therefore, with 
calm satisfaction, trust in God, and leave results to him." 

General Gordon testifies that in the deep agony of spirit 
with which Lee witnessed the grief of his soldiers at the sur- 
render, he exclaimed, " I could wish that I were numbered 
among the slain of the last battle," but that he at once re- 
called the wish, and said, " No ! we must live for our afflicted 
country." 

And one of his officers relates that during those hours of 
terrible suspense, when he was considering the question of 
surrender, he exclaimed from the depths of a full heart : 
" How easily I could get rid of this and be at rest ! I have 
only to ride along the lines, and all will be over. But," he 
quickly added, " it is our duty to live — for what will become 
of the women and children of the South if we are not here 
to support and protect them ? " 

So, too, after the surrender, he determined that it was 



DUTY THE KEY-NOTE OF HIS LIFE. 145 

his duty to remain in his native State, sliare her fortunes, 
and abide all the perils of personal danger which then seemed 
to surround him. 

He said to an intimate friend who visited him in Rich- 
mond soon after the surrender : " What course I shall pur- 
sue I have not decided upon, and each man must be the judge 
of his own action. "We must all, however, resolve on one 
thing — not to abandon our country. ]^ow, more than at any 
other time, Yirginia and eveiy State in the South needs us. 
We must try and, with as little delay as possible, go to work 
to build up their prosperity. The young men especially 
must stay at home, bearing themselves in such a manner as 
to gain the esteem of every one at the same time that they 
maintain their own seK-respect," 

It was my sad privilege, not long after General Lee's 
death, to look over some papers found in his army-satchel, 
together with his parole, and other things which had not 
been disturbed since his return from Appomattox Court- 
House. On loose sheets he had written — evidently to amuse 
a leisure hour in camp — a great many maxims, proverbs, 
quotations from the Psalms, selections from standard authors, 
and reflections of his own. On one sheet was found, in his 
well-known handwriting, the following : 

" The warmest instincts of every man's soul declare the 
glory of the soldier's death. It is more appropriate to the 
Chi'istian than to the Greek to sing : 

' Glorious Ms fate, and envied is his lot, 
Who for his country fights and for it dies.' 

" There is a true glory and a true honor : the glory of 
duty done — the honor of the integrity of principle." 

On another sheet he had written : " Private and public 

life are subject to the same rules ; and truth and manliness 

are two qualities that will carry you through this world much 

better than^6>Z^cy, or tact, or expediency ^ or any other word 

that was ever devised to conceal or mystify a deviation from 

a straight line." 
10 



146 REMIXISCKSTES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

In finally deciding npon Ms course after tlie sni-render — 
in refusing the many tempting ofEers that were made him, 
turning aside from "wealth and honors still within his grasp, 
and going of his own fi-ee choice to the quiet town of Lexing- 
ton to derote his remaining years to the interests of "Washing, 
ton College — ^he but acted on the guiding principle of his life. 

To his life-long friend. General W. X. Pendleton, he 
wrote, in reference to accepting the presidency of Washington 
College : 

" If I thought I could be of any benefit to our noble youth, 
I should not hesitate to give my services." 

Hon. H. W. HiUiard. ex-member of the Federal Congress, 
made a speech in Augusta, Ga., at the meeting there held to 
do honor to the memory of General Lee, in which he said ; 

"An oft'er, originating in Georgia, and I believe in this 
very city, was made to him to place an immense sum of money 
at his disposal if he would consent to reside in the city of Xew 
York and represent Southern commerce. Dillons would have 
fiowed to him. But he declined. He said : ' Xo ; I am 
grateful, but I have a self-imposed task, which I must accom- 
plish. 1 have led the young men of the South in battle ; I 
have seen many of them fall under my standard. I shall de- 
vote my life now to training young men to do their duty in 
life.' " 



I 



CHAPTEE lY. 

HIS MODEST HKMILITT, SIMPLICITT, AIH) GEIHXENESS. 

If ever there lived a man who might of right hej^'/'oud, it 
was General Lee ! Descended from a long line of illustrious 
ancestors — allied by marriage to the family of George Wash- 
ington — of manly beauty, rarely equaled — with honors con- 
stantly clustering around his brow, until his fame was coex- 
tensive with two continents — ^it would surely have been ex- 
cusable had he exhibited, if not a haughty spirit, at least a 
consciousness of his superiority and his fame. 

But modest humility, simplicity, and gentleness, were 
most conspicuous in his daily life. 

Scrupulously neat in his dress, he was always simply at- 
tired, and carefully avoided the gold-lace and feathers in which 
others delighted. During the war, he usually wore a suit of 
gray, without ornament, and with no insignia of rank save 
three stars on his collar, which every Confederate colonel was 
entitled to wear. But he always kept a handsomer (though 
equally simple) uniform, which he wore upon occasions of 
ceremony. General "W. X. Pendleton — chief of artillery of 
the Army of jN'orthern Virginia — relates that on the morning 
of the surrender he found him before daybreak dressed in his 
neatest style, and that to his inquiries he pleasantly rephed : 
" K I am to be General Grant's prisoner to-day, I intend to 
make my best appearance." 

There was a smaller number of attendants about General 



148 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

Lee's headquarters, and less display of " the pomp and cir- 
cumstance of war," than about the quarters of many officers 
of inferior rank. He was frequently seen riding alone among 
the troops, or attended by a single courier ; more than half 
the time with hat lifted in response to loving salutations or 
enthusiastic cheers from his ragged soldiers. 

An intelligent gentleman at whose house Major-General 
John Pope once had his headquarters — on that famous cam- 
pain in 1862, dm-ing which Stonewall Jackson rudely broke 
in upon his dream of victory and compeEed him, despite his 
general orders, to look to his " lines of retreat " — gave the 
writer a vivid contrast between the regal splendor in which 
this officer moved, and the modest simplicity observed at the 
headquarters of the great Confederate leader. 

One of his brigadiers asked him one day, "Why is it, 
general, that you do not wear the full insignia of your rank, 
but content yourself with the stars of a colonel ? " ' Oh,' re- 
plied the modest chieftain, ' I do not care for display. And 
the tnith is, that the rank of colonel is aljout as liigh as I 
ought ever to have gotten ; or, perhaps, I might manage a 
good cavalry brigade if I had the right kind of subordi- 
nates.' 

No name (certainly no name of like rank) appears so con- 
spicuously in General Scott's reports of his Mexican campaign 
as that of the young engineer-officer, R. E. Lee. At Cerro 
Gordo, General Scott wrote : ' I am compelled to make spe- 
cial mention of Captain R. E. Lee, engineer. This officer 
greatly distinguished himself at the siege of Yera Cruz ; was 
again indefatigable during these operations in reconnoissances, 
as daring as laborious, and of the utmost value. ^N'or was he 
less conspicuous in planting batteries, and in conducting col- 
umns to their stations under the heavy fire of the enemy.' 
General Scott says of him at Chapultepec, that he was ' as 
distinguished for felicitous execution as for science and dar- 
ing.' Again : ' Captain Lee, so constantly distinguished, also 
bore important orders from me, until he fainted from a 



HIS MODEST HUMILITY, SIMPLICITY, AND GENTLENESS. I49 

"woimd and the loss of two nights' sleep at the batteries.' 
This distinguished service made him a name among his com- 
rades, and famous throughout the country. 

In 1869 1 heard General Lee, in conversing with a vis- 
iting minister, who had the day before fainted in the pulpit, 
allude to the incident which General Scott speaks of in such 
high praise. But he spoke of ' going up to the gates of the 
city,' and having a ' tedious season,' and ' a slight wound ' 
which brought on a ' faintiug-spell,' in such quiet, modest 
phrase that no one unacquainted with the facts would have 
supposed for a moment that he was then winning the bright- 
est laurels and laying deep the foundations of his imperish- 
able fame. 

Indeed, he rarely alluded at all to his own exploits, and 
never spoke of them except in the most modest, becoming 
manner. 

I cannot better illustrate these points further than by 
giving an extract from the eloquent address of Colonel 
Charles Marshall — the accomplished military secretary of 
General Lee — delivered at the Soldiers' Memorial Meeting 
in Baltimore : 

" We recall him as he appeared in the hour of victory, 
grand, imposing, awe-inspiring, yet self -forgetful and hum- 
ble. We recall the great scenes of his triumph, when we 
hailed him victor on many a bloody field, and when above 
the pseans of victory we listened with reverence to his voice 
as he ascribed ' all glory to the Lord of hosts, from whom 
all glories are.' We remember that grand magnanimity that 
never stooped to pluck the meaner things that grow nearest 
the earth upon the tree of victory, but which, with eyes' 
turned to the stars, and hands raised toward heaven, gathered 
golden fruits of mercy, pity, and holy charity, that ripen on 
its topmost bough beneath the approving smile of the great 
God of battles. 

" We remember the sublime self-abnegation of Chancel- 
lorsville, when, in the midst of his victorious legions, who, 



150 KEMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

with the light of battle still on their faces, hailed him con- 
queror, he thought only of his great lieutenant Ijing wounded 
on the field, and transferred to him all the honor of that illus- 
trious day. 

" I will be pardoned, I am sure, for referring to an inci- 
dent which affords to my mind a most striking illustration of 
one of the gi'andest features of his character. 

" On the morning of May 3, 1863, as many of you will 
remember, the final assault was made upon the Federal lines 
at Chancellorsville. 

" General Lee accompanied the troops in person, and as 
they emerged from the fierce combat they had waged in ' the 
depths of that tangled wilderness,' driving the superior forces 
of the enemy before them across the open ground, he rode 
into their midst. The scene is one that can never be effaced 
from the minds of those who witnessed it. The troops were 
pressing forward with all the ardor and enthusiasm of com- 
bat. The white smoke of musketry fringed the front of the 
hne of battle, while the artillery on the hills in the rear of 
the infantry shook the earth with its thunder, and filled the 
air with the wild shrieks of the shells that plunged into the 
masses of the retreating foe. To add greater horror and 
subhmity to the scene, the Chancellorsville House and the 
woods surrounding it were wrapped in flames. In the midst 
of this awful scene General Lee, mounted upon that horse 
which we all remember so well, rode to the front of his ad- 
vancing battalions. His presence was the signal for one of 
those uncontrollable outbm*sts of enthusiasm which none can 
appreciate who have not witnessed them. 

" The fierce soldiers, with their faces blackened with the 
smoke of battle, the wounded, crawling with feeble limbs 
from the fury of the devouring fiames, all seemed possessed 
with a common impulse. One long, unbroken cheer, in 
which the feeble cry of those who lay helpless on the earth 
blended with the strong voices of those who still fought, rose 
high above the roar of battle, and hailed the presence of the 



HIS MODEST HUMILITY, SIMPLICITY, AND GENTLENESS. 151 

victorious chief. He sat in the full realization of all that 
soldiers dream of — triumph ; and as I looked upon him in 
the complete fruition of the success which his genius, courage, 
and confidence in his army had won, I thought that it must 
have been from some such scene that men in ancient days as- 
cended to the dignity of the gods. 

" His first care was for the wounded of both armies, and 
he was among the foremost at the burning mansion where 
some of them lay. But at that moment, when the transports 
of his victorious troops were drowning the roar of battle with 
acclamations, a note was brought to him from General Jack- 
son. It was brought to General Lee as he sat on his horse, 
near the Chancellorsville House, and, unable to open it with 
his gauntleted hands, he passed it to me with directions to 
read it to him. The note made no mention of the wound 
that General Jackson had received, but congratulated Gen- 
eral Lee upon the great factory. 

" I shall never forget the look of pain and anguish that 
passed over his face as he listened. With a voice broken 
with emotion he bade me say to General Jackson that the vic- 
tory was his, and that the congratulations were due to him. 
I know not how others may regard this incident, but, for my- 
self, as I gave expression to the thoughts of his exalted 
mind, I forgot the genius that won the day in my reverence 
for the generosity that refused its gloiy. 

" There is one other incident to which I beg permission 
to refer, that I may perfect the picture. On the 3d day of 
July, 1863, the last assault of the Confederate troops upon 
the heights of Gettysburg failed, and again General Lee was 
among his baffled and shattered battalions as they sullenly re- 
tired from their brave attempt. The history of that battle is 
yet to be wi-itten, and the responsibility for the result is yet 
to be fixed. 

" But there, with the painful consciousness that his plans 
had been frustrated by others, and that defeat and humilia- 
tion had overtaken his army, in the presence of his troops he 



152 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

openly assumed the entire responsibility of the campaign, and 
of the last battle. One word from him would have relieved 
him of this responsibility, but that word he refused to utter un- 
til it could be spoken without fear of doing the least injustice. 
Thus, my fellow-soldiers, I have presented to you our great 
commander in the supreme moments of triumph and of de- 
feat. I cannot more strongly illustrate his character. Has 
it been surpassed in history ? Is there another instance of 
such self-abnegation among men ? The man rose high above 
victory in the one instance, and, harder still, the man rose 
superior to disaster in the other. It was such incidents as 
these that gave General Lee the absolute and undoubting con- 
fidence and affection of his soldiers." 

To Jackson's note informing him that he was wounded 
General Lee replied : " I cannot express my regret at the oc- 
currence. Could I have directed events I should have chosen, 
for the good of the country, to have been disabled in your 
stead. I congratulate you on the victory which is due to 
your skill and energy." It was on the reception of these 
touching words that the wounded chieftain exclaimed : " Bet- 
ter that ten Jacksons should fall than one Lee." 

Several days afterward, when his great lieutenant was 
reported to be doing well, Lee playfully sent him word: 
" You are better off than I am ; for while you have only lost 
your left^ I have lost my right arm." 

Hearing soon after that Jackson was growing worse, he 
expressed the deepest concern and said : " Tell him that I am 
praying for him as I beheve I have never prayed for my- 
self." 

The 10th of May, 1863, was a beautiful Sabbath-day, and 
Rev. B. T. Lacy, at the special request of the dying chief- 
tain, left his bedside to hold his usual services at the head- 
quarters of the Second Corps. General Lee was present at 
the service, and at its conclusion he took Mr. Lacy aside to 
inquire particularly after Jackson's condition. Upon being 
told that he would not probably live through the day, he ex- 



HIS MODEST HUMILITY, SIMPLICITY, AND GENTLENESS. I53 

claimed : " Oh, sir, lie must not die. Surely God will not 
visit us with such a calamity. If I have ever prayed in my 
life, I have pleaded with the Lord that Jackson might be 
spared to us." And then his heart swelled with emotion too 
deep for utterance, and he turned away to weep like a child. 

The warm friendship which existed between Lee and 
Jackson is in beautiful contrast with the petty jealousies and 
bickeruigs which have not unfrequently marked the rela- 
tions and interfered with the success of military chieftains. 

The rising fame of Jackson excited no envy in the bosom 
of Lee ; but the praises of the lieutenant were most heartily 
indorsed by the commander-in-chief, who gave him his full 
confidence and warm personal friendship. He announced 
to the troops the death of Jackson in the following order : 

" General Orders JVb. 61. 
" Headquabteks Army op Northern Virginia, 3fay 11, 1863. 
" With deep grief the commanding general announces to the 
army the death of Lieutenant-General T. J. Jackson, who ex- 
pired on the 10th inst., at a quarter past 3 P. M. The dar- 
ing, skill, and energy of this great and good soldier are now, 
by the decree of an all-wise Providence, lost to us. But, while 
we mourn his death, we feel that his spirit still lives, and will 
inspire the whole army with his indomitable courage, and un- 
shaken confidence in God as our hope and strength. Let his 
name be a watchword to his corps, who have followed him to 
victory on so many fields. Let his officers and soldiers emulate 
his invincible determination to do every thing in the defense of 
our beloved country. R. E. Lee, General." 

In a private letter to his wife General Lee wrote : 

"Camp near Fredericksburg, 3fay 11, 1863. 
". . . . In addition to the death of officers and friends con- 
sequent upon the late battle, you will see that we have to 
mourn the loss of the great and good Jackson. Any victory 
wovild be dear at such a price. His remains go to Richmond 
to-day. I know not how to replace him; but God's will be 



154 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

done ! I trust He will raise up some one in his place. The papers 
will give you all the particulars. I have no time to narrate 
them." 

The following extract from an article in the Southern 
Magazine on " Stonewall Jackson between his Death-bed and 
his Grave," by Major H. Kyd Douglas, of Jackson's staff, 
well illustrates this point : 

" On Monday morning, at the request of the oflScer in 
command of the Stonewall Brigade, I went to ask General 
Lee if in his judgment it was proper to permit the old bri- 
gade, or a part of it, to accompany the remains of General 
Jackson to Richmond as an escort. I found the commander- 
in-chief walking in front of his tent, looking sad and 
thoughtful. He listened attentively to my request, and then, 
in a voice as gentle and sad as his looks, replied : ' I am sure 
no one can feel the loss of General Jackson more deeply 
than I do ; for no one has the same reason. I have lost a 
dear friend and an invaluable officer. I can fully appreciate 
the feelings of the men of his old brigade ; they have reason 
to mourn for him, for he was proud of them. They have 
been with him and true to bim since the beginning of the 
war. I should be glad to grant any request they might make, 
the object of which was to show their regard for their lost 
general ; and I am sorry that the situation of affairs will not 
justify me in permitting them to go with his corpse, not 
only to Richmond, but to Lexington, that they might see it 
deposited in its last resting-place. But it may not be. Those 
people over the river are again showing signs of movement, 
and it is so necessary for me to be on hand that I cannot 
leave my headquarters long enough to ride to the depot and 
pay my dear friend the poor tribute of seeing his body 
placed upon the cars.' Then, after stating what orders he 
had sent to Richmond for the reception of the remains, he 
said : ' His friends of the Stonewall Brigade may be assured 
their general will receive all the honor practicable But as 




1 y 



/ 



f/f^-K^yt 



/' 



HIS MODEST HUMILITY, SIMPLICITY, AND GENTLENESS. 155 

General Jackson himseK never neglected a duty while living, 
he would not rest the quieter in his grave because even his 
old brigade had left the presence of the enemy to see him 
buried. Tell them how I sympathize with them, and ap- 
preciate the feelings which prompted their request. Tell 
them for me, that deeply as we alj. lament the death of their 
general, yet if Ids body is only to be buried and his spirit 
remains behind to inspire his corps and this whole army, we 
may have reason to hope that in the end his death may be as 
great a gain to us as it certainly is to himself.' " 

I am indebted to. my friend Rev. J. P. Smith, of Fred- 
ericksburg, Ya. (who served on Jackson's staff during the 
whole of his brilliant career), for the following copy of an 
autograph letter from Lee to Jackson, written on the night 
of the battle of Fredericksburg : 

"Headquarters, December 13, 1862. 
" Generai. : Will you direct your ordnance-officer, Major Bier, 
to send to Guinney's Depot immediately all the empty ordnance- 
wagons he can, to be replenished with ammunition, for which 
they must remain there till loaded ? To obtain as many wagons 
as possible, let him empty all he can in replenishing the ammu- 
nition of men and batteries. 

" Very respectfully, R. E. Lee. 

" P. S. — I need not remind you to have the ammunition of 
your men and batteries replenished to-night — every thing ready 
by daylight to-morrow. I am truly grateful to the Giver of all 
victory for having blessed us thus far in our terrible struggle. 
I pray He may continue to do so. R. E. L. 

*' General Jackson commanding." 

His full confidence in Jackson's skill was illustrated in 
the playful reply he made to one of his aides who came to 
his tent, on April 29, 1863, to inform him that the enemy 
had crossed the river in heavy force : " Well, I heard firing, 
and I was beginning to think it was time some of you lazy 
young fellows were coming to tell me what it was all about. 



156 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

Say to General Jackson that Tie Tcnows just as well what to 
do with the enemy as I doP 

To one of his trusted officers lie said, after Jackson's 
death: "I had such implicit confidence in Jackson's skill 
and energy, that I never troubled myself to give him de- 
tailed instructions. The most general suggestions were all 
that he needed." 

In speaking of Jackson one day not long before his own 
fatal illness, and of the irreparable loss the South sustained 
in his death, General Lee said, with emphasis : " If I had had 
Stonewall Jackson at Gettysburg, we should have won a 
great victory. And I feel confident that a complete success 
there would have resulted in the establishment of our inde- 
pendence." 

And this affectionate confidence of his chief was fully 
reciprocated by Jackson. In the summer of 1862 (soon after 
General Lee had taken command of the army) some officer 
ventured to intimate in his presence that the new commander 
was " slow," and that the army needed such an active leader 
as the one who had just double-quicked his " foot cavalry " 
through the splendid " Yalley campaign." Instead of being 
pleased at the compliment intended to be paid him, Jackson 
replied, in indignant tones : " General Lee is not ' slow.' JS'o 
one knows the weight upon his heart — his great responsibili- 
ties. He is commander-in-chief, and he knows that if his 
army is lost, it cannot be replaced. N^o ! there may be some 
persons whose good opinion of me may make them attach • 
some weight to my views, and if you ever hear that said of 
General Lee, I beg that you will contradict it in my name. 
I have known General Lee for five-and-twenty years. He is 
cautious. He ought to be. But he is not ' slow.' Lee is a 
phenomenon. He is the only man whom I would follow 
blindfold." 

The opinion thus expressed in the early days of their 
service together during the late war (they were comrades in 
Mexico) seems to have strengthened up to the death of Jack- 



niS MODEST HUMILITY, SIMPLICITY, AND GENTLENESS. 157 

son, and it has been said by a gallant soldier and facile writer 
(Colonel John Esten Cooke), who knew tkem both well, tliat 
the lieutenant always thought what the chief directed or sug- 
gested the very lest thing to do, and that about the only oc- 
casion upon which he openly expressed dissent from Lee's 
opinions was when he said, on receiving his note of congratu- 
lation on the victory of Chancellorsville, ' General Lee should 
give the glory to God.'' " 

In several private letters to Mrs. Jackson, General Lee 
expressed his warmest admiration and regard for her " great 
and good husband." 

The following is given in full, and will be read with 
deep interest by many old soldiers who so well remember 
the coat : 

"Lexington, Va., January 18, 1868. 
'■'■Mrs. M. A. Jackson, Care of James P. Irwin, Gha/rloUe, K G. 

" My dear Mrs, Jackson : In compliance with your wishes, 
as expressed in your note of the 6th inst, I forward by express, 
to the care of Mr. James P. Irwin, Charlotte, N. C, the over- 
coat sent to me by Mr. J. R. Bryan, of Virginia. 

" It has appeared to me most proper that this relic of your 
husband, though painfully recalling his death, should be pos- 
sessed by you, and I take great pleasure in transmitting it to 
you. 

" I inclose you an extract from Mr. Bryan's letter, describ- 
ing how the coat came into his possession, etc. 

" It is a familiar object to my sight, and must recall sad rem- 
iniscences to the mind of every soldier of the Army of Northern 
Virginia. 

" With my most earnest wishes for the welfare and happi- 
ness of yourself and daughter, I am, with great respect, 

" Your most obedient servant, 

" R. E. Lee." 

The following gives pleasing evidence of his deep inter- 
est in all details concerning the history of his great lieu- 
tenant : 



158 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" Lexington, Va., March 5, 1866. 
*' Mr. D. Ckeel, Chillicothe, Ohio. 

" My deab Sir: I have received your letter of the 24th ult., 
and thank you for the interesting account of the early history of 
General T. J. Jackson. It is as pleasant as profitable to con- 
template his character, to recall his patriotism, his piety, and 
his unselfish nature. The early instructions of his mother, whom 
he seems never to have forgotten, may have had great influence 
in shaping his course through life, and that mother may have 
been greatly indebted to you for qualifying her for the discharge 
of her important duty. I hope that the remainder of your days 
may be passed in peace and rest ; and that the merciful God 
who has given you such length of days, and protected you amid 
so many dangers, may comfort and support you to the end. 
" "With great respect, your obedient servant, 

" R. E. Lee." 

It is due alike to General Lee and to the truth of his- 
tory that the following letter should be given in full ; and I 
do so on my own responsibility, hoping that the distinguished 
gentleman to whom it is addressed will pardon the liberty 
I take : 

" Lexington, Va., October 28, 186Y. 
" Dr. A. T. Bledsoe, Office of Southern Review, Baltimore, Md. 

" My dear Sir : I regret that I am unable to comply with 
your request to write a review of Hozier's ' Seven Weeks' War,' 
but my time is so much occupied that I could not sufficiently 
study the campaign, or inform myself of the incidents of the war. 

" At the time of the occvurence, I thought I saw the mistake 
committed by the Austrians ; but I did not know all the facts, 
and you are aware that, though it is easy to write on such a sub- 
ject, it is difficult to elucidate the truth. 

" In reply to your inquiry, I must acknowledge that I have 
not read the article on Chancellorsville in the last number of the 
Southern Heview, nor have I read any of the books published on 
either side since the termination of hostilities. I have as yet 
felt no desire to revive my recollections of those events, and 
have been satisfied with the knowledge I possessed of what 



HIS MODEST HUMILITY, SIMPLICITY, AND GENTLENESS. 159 

transpired. I have, however, learned from others that the vari-; 
ous authors of the ' Life of Jackson ' award to him the credit of 
the success gained by the Army of Northern Virginia where he 
was present, and describe the movements of his corps or com- 
mand as independent of the general plan of operations, and un- 
dertaken at his own suggestion, and upon his own responsibility. 
I have the greatest reluctance to do any thing that might be con- 
sidered as detracting from his well-deserved fame, for I believe 
that no one was more convinced of his worth, or appreciated 
him more highly, than myself; yet your knowledge of mihtary 
affairs, if you have none of the events themselves, will teach you 
that this could not have been so. Every movement of an army 
must be well considered, and properly ordered ; and every one 
who knows General Jackson must know that he was too good a 
soldier to violate this fundamental military principle. In the 
operations round Chancellorsville I overtook General Jackson, 
who had been placed in command of the advance as the skir- 
mishers of the approaching armies met, advanced with the 
troops to the Federal line of defenses, and was on the field un- 
til their whole army recrossed the Rappahannock. There is no 
question as to who was responsible for the operations of the 
Confederates, or to whom any failure would have been charged. 
What I have said is for your own information. With my best 
wishes for the success of the Southern Review, and for your 
own welfare, in both of which I take a lively interest, I am, with 
great respect, your friend and servant, R. E. Lee." 

Tliose who have attempted to institute comparisons be- 
tween Lee and Jackson, or to exalt one at the expense of the 
other, have utterly misapprehended the character of both. 
They were, indeed, jyar nobile fratrum. They worked to- 
gether for the cause they loved — their bodies sleep near each 
other in the beautiful " Yalley of Virginia " — and it is a 
pleasing fancy that, when Lee " struck his tent " and " crossed 
over the river to rest under the shade of the trees," Jackson 
was the first to greet and welcome him to those fadeless joys. 

And these pleasant relations between these two great 



160 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

men were by no means exceptional. Lee bore himself in 
the same manner toward all of his officers, and none of them 
could charge that he ever sought for himself honor or credit 
which justly belonged to others. But, on the contrary, he 
sometimes suffered himself to be censured when, by a word, 
he coidd have transferred the blame to others. 

We have seen, above, what a member of his staff says of 
his conduct, as he moved among his shattered battalions after 
their unsuccessful assault on the heights of Gettysburg. And, 
lest it be thought that he looked through the eyes of too par- 
tial friendship, we give the following from an account of the 
same scene written by Colonel Freemantle, of the English 
Army, who was also an eye-witness : 

" I joined General Lee, who had, in the mean while, come 
to the front on becoming aware of the disaster. General Lee 
was perfectly sublime. He was engaged in rallying and en- 
couraging the broken troops, and was riding about a little in 
front of the wood, quite alone — the whole of his staff being 
engaged m a similar manner farther to the rear. His face, 
which is always placid and cheerful, did not show signs of 
the slightest disappointment, care, or annoyance ; and he was 
addressing to every soldier he met a few words of encourage- 
ment, such as ' All this will come right in the end ; we'll talk 
it over afterward ; but, in the mean time, all good men must 
rally. We want all good and true men just now,' etc. He 
spoke to all the wounded men that passed him, and the slight- 
ly wounded 'he exhorted to 'bind up their hurts and take a 
musket ' in this emergency. Very few failed to answer his 
apj)eal, and I saw badly-wounded men take off their hats and 

cheer him. General now came up to him, and, in very 

depressed tones of annoyance and vexation, explained the state 
of his brigade. But General Lee immediately shook hands 
with him, and said, in a cheerful manner : '■ Never mind, gen- 
eral. All this has been my fault. It is I that have lost this 
fight, and you must help me out of it the best way you can.' 
In this manner did General Lee, wholly ignoring self and 



HIS MODEST HUMILITY, SIMPLICITY, AND GENTLENESS. 161 

position, encourage and reanimate his somewhat dispirited 
troops, and magnanimously take upon his own shoulders the 
whole weight of the repulse. It was impossible to look at 
him, or to listen to him, without feeling the strongest admi- 
ration." 

The effect of his conduct on the troops was electrical : 
the broken commands were rallied, and his army soon pre- 
sented such a determined front, that General Meade did not 
deem it prudent to attack. 

When General Lee reached Hagerstown in his retrograde 
movement, the Potomac was past fording. Meade's army 
was close upon his rear ; the Northern press were clamorous 
for the capture of " Lee's beaten, dispirited ragamuffins," and 
another battle seemed imminent. The following stirring 
order was issued : 

^^ General Order No. 16. 

"Headquarters Army Northern Virginia, Juli/ 11, 1863. 
" After the long and trying inarches, endured with the forti- 
tude that has ever characterized the soldiers of the Army of 
Northern Virginia, you have penetrated to the country of our 
enemies, and recalled to the defense of their own soil those who 
were engaged in the invasion of ours. You have fought a fierce 
and sanguinary battle, which, if not attended with the success 
that has hitherto crowned your efforts, was marked by the same 
heroic spirit that has commanded the respect of your enemies, 
the gratitude of your cotmtry, and the admiration of mankind. 

Once more you are called upon to meet the enemy from 
whom you have torn so many fields — names that will never die. 
Once more the eyes of your countrymen are turned upon you, 
and again do wives and sisters, fathers and mothers, and helpless 
children, lean for defense on your strong arms and brave hearts. 
Let every soldier remember that on his courage and fidelity 
depends all that makes life worth having, the freedom of his 
country, the honor of his people, and the security of his home. 
Let each heart grow strong in the remembrance of our glorious 
past, and in the thought of the inestimable blessings for which 

11 



162 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

we contend; and, invoking the assistance of that heavenly 
Power which has so signally blessed our former efforts, let us 
go forth in confidence to secure the peace and safety of our 
country. Soldiers ! your old enemy is before you. "Win from 
him honor worthy of your right cause, worthy of your comrades 
dead on so many illustrious fields. 

"R. E. Lee, General commanding^'* 

This address was received with the greatest enthusiasm. 
That army was never more eager to fight, or more confident 
of victory, than it was that day, and General Meade showed 
his able generalship in not making the attack. 

In the winter of 1864 the following incident went the 
rounds of the Southern press : 

" One very cold morning a young soldier on the cars to 
Petersburg was making fruitless efforts to put on his over- 
coat, with his arm in a sling. His teeth, as well as his sound 
arm, were brought into use to effect the object ; but in the 
midst of his efforts an officer rose from his seat, advanced to 
him, and very carefully and tenderly assisted him, drawing 
the coat gently over his wounded arm, and buttoning it com- 
fortably ; then, with a few kind and pleasant words, returned 
to his seat. 

" Kow the officer in question was not clad in gorgeous 
uniform, with a brilliant wreath upon the collar, and a mul- 
titude of gilt lines upon the sleeves, resembling the famous 
labyrinth of Crete, but he was clad in ' a simple suit of gray,' 
distinguished from the garb of a civilian only by the three 
stars which every Confederate colonel is, by the regulations, 
entitled to wear. And yet he was no other than our chief 
general, Robert E. Lee, who is not braver than he is good 
and modest." 

It is related that during the seven days' battle he was 
quietly sitting under a tree, the approaching shades of evening 
concealing even his stars, and none of his aides or couriers 
being present, when an impetuous surgeon galloped up and 



HIS MODEST HUMILITY, SIMPLICITY, AND GENTLENESS. 163 

abruptly said: "Old man, I have chosen that tree for my 
field-hospital, and I want you to get out of the way." 

" I will cheerfully give place when the wounded come, 
doctor, but in the mean time there is a plenty of room for 
both of us," was the meek rejoinder. The irate surgeon was 
about to make some harsh reply, when to his utter consterna- 
tion a staff -officer rode up and addressed his " old man " as 
General Lee. To his profuse apologies and explanations, the 
general quietly replied : " It is no matter, doctor ; there is 
plenty of room for both of us until your wounded are 
brought." 

The following was found in his own handwriting on one 
of the loose sheets in the satchel to which I have before re- 
ferred : 

"The forbearing use of power does not only form a 
touchstone, but the manner in which an individual enjoys 
certain advantages over others is a test of a true gentleman. 

" The power which the strong have over the weak, the 
magistrate over the citizen, the employer over the employed, 
the educated over the unlettered, the experienced over the 
confiding, even the clever over the silly — the forbearing or inof- 
fensive use of all this power or authority, or a total abstinence 
from it when the case admits it, will show the gentleman in 
a plain light. The gentleman does not needlessly and unne- 
cessarily remind an offender of a wrong he may have com- 
mitted against him. He cannot only forgive, he can forget ; 
and he strives for that nobleness of self and mildness of 
character which impart sufficient strength to let the past be 
but the past. A true man of honor feels humlUd himself 
when he cannot help humbling other s^ 

The following incident is from the Norfolk Virginian of 
October, 1870 : 

"Some years ago we stood, in company with General 
Lee, watching a fire in the mountains, which blazed out with 
a baleful glare on the darkness of a winter's night. The 
scene was as picturesque as any Salvator ever painted, and 



164 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

the conversation naturally tui'ned on its beauty. At last ap- 
pealed to for an opinion, the general replied : ' It is beautiful, 
but I have been thinking of the poor animals which must 
perish in the flames.' There was no affectation in this. His 
tone was simple and earnest — his manner a complete nega- 
tion of all art. "With this wealth of tenderness, added to his 
grand and knightly attributes of character, it is no wonder 
that his people loved him with all their hearts, and cherish 
his memory with a passionate devotion." 

An officer who witnessed the incident relates that on one 
occasion in 1864, when General Lee was visiting Captain 

G 's battery, on the lines below Richmond, the soldiers 

gathered near him so as to attract the enemy's fire. 

Turning to them he said, in a very quiet tone and man- 
ner : " Men, you had better go into the back-yard ; they are 
firing up here, and you are exposing yourselves to unnecessary 
danger." 

The men obeyed the order, but saw their loved general 
walk across the yard (as if entirely unconscious of any per- 
sonal danger), and stoop down to pick up tenderly some small 
object, and place it gently upon a tree over his head. 

It was afterward ascertained that the object which had 
thus attracted his attention under the enemy's fire, was cm 
unfledged sparrow that had fallen from its nest. 

That loving Father, without whose knowledge not even 
a sparrow falleth to the ground, gave to the stern warrior a 
heart so tender that he could pause amid the death-deahng 
missiles of the battle-field to care for a helpless little bird. 

His letters to his family were full of expressions of inter- 
est in birds and animals, or flowers. In a letter from Fort 
Brown, Texas, December, 1856, he says : 

" .... I am able to give you but little news, as nothing 
of interest transpires here, and I rarely see any one outside 
the garrison. My daily walks are alone, up and down the 
banks of the river, and my pleasure is derived from my own 
thoughts, and from the sight of the flowers and animals I 



HIS MODEST HUMILITY, SIMPLICITY, AND GENTLENESS. 165 

there meet with. The birds of the Rio Grande form a con- 
stant som-ce of interest, and are as numerous as thej are 
beautiful in plumage. I wish I could get for you the roots 
of some of the luxuriant vines that cover every thing, or 
the seeds of the innumerable flowers." 

He paused amid his pressing duties at Gettysburg, to re- 
prove an officer who was beating an unruly horse. For the 
noble animal which bore him through so many of his cam- 
paigns he cherished the tenderest regard. In a letter writ- 
ten from the Springs to his clerk in Lexington, he says: 
" How is Traveler ? Tell him I miss him dreadfully, and 
have repented of our separation but once, and that is the 
whole time since we parted." 

To those who knew his affection for this favorite horse it 
was very touchingly appropriate to see him, with saddle and 
accoutrements draped, led in the funeral procession by two 
old soldiers, and we could almost fancy that " Traveler " ap- 
preciated his loss, and entered keenly into the conmion sor- 
row. 

His modest humility was very evident in his correspond- 
ence, and many letters illustrating it might be given. The 
several following must suffice : 

" Lexington, Va., September 26, 1866. 
" Mr. Edwakd a. Poixaed, Care of L. S. Palmer & Oo., ) 
104 West Baltimore St., Baltimore, Md. ) 

" Deae Sir : I return to you my thanks for the coinpliment 
paid me by your proposition to write a history of my life. It is a 
hazardous undertaking to publish the life of any one while liv- 
ing, and there are but few who wovdd desire to read a true his- 
tory of themselves. Independently of the few national events 
with which mine has been connected, it presents little to interest 
the general reader. Nor do I know where to refer you for the 
necessary materials ; all my private as well as public records have 
been destroyed or lost, and, except what is to be found in pub- 
lished documents, I know of nothing available for the purpose. 
Should you, therefore, determine to undertake the work, you 



166 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

must rely upon yourself, as my time is so fully occupied that I 
am unable to promise you any assistance. 

" Very respectfully, R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., March 21, 1866. 
'■^Mrs. Emma Willaed, Troy, N. T» 

" I received, by the last mail, the package containing your 
letter of the 15th inst. I have mailed to Generals Johnston, 
Beauregard, and Bragg, the letters for them. The address of 
the first is Richmond, Va., and of the second, New Orleans, La. 
Not knowing the address of the third, I have forwarded his 
letter to a friend in New Orleans, who will give it the proper des- 
tination. I know of no one here who can give you as correct a 
history of the life of General T. J. Jackson as that written by 
the Rev. Dr. Dabney, which, I understand, is now in process 
of publication by Blelock & Co., of New York City. I am 
obliged to you for your proposition as regards myself, but it is 
not in my power to give you the account you require ; my time 
is too fully occupied to permit me to undertake it, even if I 
were able to make it of value. 

" With great respect, your obedient servant, 
(Signed) "R. E. Lee." 

In response to another letter from a Virginian lady, asking 
permission to visit him at his home in order to gather mate- 
rials for writing his biography, he wrote the following : 

" Lexington, Va., December 1, 1869. 

" Miss • : I have received your letter of the 3d inst., 

and am sensible of the implied compliment in your proposal to 
write a history of my life. 

" I should be happy to see you in Lexington, but not on the 
errand you propose, for I know of nothing good I could tell you 
of myself, and I fear I should not like to say any evil. The few 
incidents of interest in which I have been engaged are as well 
known to others as to myself, and I know of nothing I could say 
in addition. 

" With great respect, your obedient servant, 

«R. E. Lee." 



CHAPTER Y. 

HIS spmrr of self-denial for the good of others. 

Closely allied to General Lee's modest limnility was his 
spirit of self-denial. He never presumed npon Ids position 
to infringe the rights of others, and never called on his sol- 
diers to make sacrifices or endure privations which he was 
not willing to share. 

Hon. A. H. Stephens says, in his " War between the 
States," that when he first came to Richmond as a commis- 
sioner of the Confederate States, to induce Yirginia to join 
the Confederacy and turn over to it her army, he was met by 
a serious difficulty in the rank of General Lee. 

By vote of the Virginia Convention, he had been made 
commander-in-chief of the forces of that State, and his friends 
were unwilling for him to have less rank, while on the other 
hand there were other officers already commissioned who 
would rank him in the Confederate army. Mr. Stephens 
sought an interview with General Lee and explained to him 
the difficulty. He at once said that no personal interest of 
his should for a single moment stand in the way of the inter- 
ests of the State; that he was willing to take any position — 
even in the ranks as a private soldier — in which he could best 
serve the common cause ; and that his rank should not for a 
moment bar the desired union. By General Lee's personal 
influence all difficulty was removed, and the fortunes of Vir- 
ginia were blended with those of the other Southern States. 
A distinguished gentleman, who at the time held an important 



168 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

State office, has given the writer the following incident, of 
which he was personally cognizant : Before Yirginia united 
with the Confederacy, President Davis had offered General 
Lee a position in the Confederate army, which he declined on 
the ground that he held a position under State authority. 
Mr. Davis did not formally renew the offer after the union 
was consummated, because he took it for granted that General 
Lee would come into his proper rank in the Confederate army. 
But General Lee did not so understand it ; he was not the 
man to seek place for himself either directly or indirectly ; 
and he was quietly getting positions for his staff, and arrang- 
ing to enlist as a private soldier in a cavalry company, when, 
through mutual friends, the mistake was discovered and 
rectified. 

Soon after his West Yirginia campaign, when — strange as 
it seems now — the newspapers and many of the people were 
severely censuring him for not fighting Rosecrans, he said to 
an intimate friend : " I could have fought, and I am satisfied 
that I could have gained a victory. But the nature of the 
country was such that it would have proved a barren victory, 
and I had rather sacrifice my military reputation and quietly 
rest under this unjust censure than to unnecessarily sacrifice 
the life of a single one of my men." 

Ex-President Davis said, in his speech at the great Memo- 
rial Meeting in Richmond, that on General Lee's return from 
that campaign he gave him a statement of the facts, which 
showed beyond all cavil that the failure was due to others and 
not to himself. And yet he urged Mr. Davis not to repeat 
his statement, as he would rather rest under censure himself 
than injure in the public esteem any who were bravely strik- 
ing for the common cause. 

General Lee rarely slept in a house — never outside of his 
lines — during the war, and when on the march some con- 
venient fence-corner would be his most frequent place of 
bivouac. The writer has not unfrequently seen some colonel, 
or major-quartermaster, entertained in princely style at some 



HIS SELF-DENIAL FOR THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 169 

hospitable mansion, while near by the commander-in-chief 
would bivouac in the open air. 

He never allowed his mess to draw from the commissary 
more than they were entitled to, and not unfrequently he 
would sit down to a dinner meagre in quality and scant in 
quantity. 

He was exceedingly abstemious in his own habits. He 
never used tobacco, and rarely took even a single glass of 
wine. Whiskey or brandy he did not drink, and he did all 
in his power to discourage their use by others. 

In the spring of 1861, while on an inspection tour to 
Norfolk, a friend there insisted that he should take two bot- 
tles of very fine old "London Dock" brandy, remarking 
that he would be certain to need it, and would find it very 
difficult to obtain so good an article. General Lee declined 
the offer, saying that he was sure he would not need it. 
" As proof that I will not," he said, " I may tell you that, 
just as I was starting to the Mexican War, a lady in Virginia 
prevailed on me to take a bottle of fine old whiskey, wliich 
she thought I could not get on without. I carried that bottle 
all through the war without having had the slightest occasion 
to use it, and on my return home I sent it back to my good 
friend, that she might be convinced that I could get on with- 
out liquor." 

But the gentleman still insisted, and the general politely 
yielded and took the two bottles. 

At the close of the war he met a brother of this gentle- 
man (from whom I get the incident) in Lexington, and said 
to him : " Tell your brother that I kept the brandy he gave 
me all through the war, and should have it yet, but that I 
was obliged to use it last summer in a severe illness of one 
of my daughters." 

I was walking with him one day in Lexington, during 
the sway of the military, when, seeing a young man stagger 
out of one of the bar-rooms, he seemed very much annoyed 
by the spectacle, and said: "I wish that these military 



170 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

gentlemen, while they are doing so many things which they 
have no right to do, would close up all of these grog-shops 
which are luring our young men to destruction." 

That he felt a lively interest in promoting sobriety 
among the young men of the college, the following letter 
will show : 

• "Washington College, Va., December 9, 1869, 
" Messrs. S. G M. Miller, J. L. Logan, T. A. Ashby, Committee. 

" Gentlemen : The announcement, in your letter of the 8th 
inst., of an organization of the ' Friends of Temperance ' in the 
college, has given me great gratification ; I sincerely hope that 
it may be the cause of lasting good, not only to the members 
themselves, but to all those with whom they associate to the 
extent of their influence and example. My experience through 
life has convinced me that, while moderation and temperance 
in all things are commendable and beneficial, abstinence from 
spirituous liquors is the best safeguard to morals and health. 
The evidence on this subject that has come within my own ob- 
servation is conclusive to my mind, and, without going into the 
recital, I cannot too earnestly exhort you to practise habitual 
temperance, so that you may form the habit in youth, and not 
feel the inclination, or temptation, to depart from it in man- 
hood. By so doing your health will be maintained, your morals 
elevated, and your success in life promoted. I shall at all times, 
and in whatever way I can, take great pleasure in advancing 
the object of your society, and you may rely on my cooperation 
in the important work in which you have engaged. 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

"R. E. Lee." 

During the war he was accustomed to do every thing in 
his power, both by precept and example, to prevent drunken- 
ness among his officers and men, and more than once he 
refused to promote an officer who drank too freely, saying, 
" I cannot consent to place in the control of others one who 
cannot control himself." 

It may be worth while for me to digress so far as to say 




I 



HIS SELF-DENIAL FOR THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 171 

that Stonewall Jackson, " Jeb " Stuart, and a large number 
of the most distinguished of the Confederate officers, imi- 
tated the example of their chief, and were strict temperance 
men. Upon one occasion Jackson was suffering so much 
from fatigue, and severe exposure, that his surgeon pre- 
vailed on him to take a little brandy. He made a very wry 
face as he swallowed it, and the doctor asked : " Why, gen- 
eral, is not the brandy good? It is some that we have 
recently captured, and 1 think it very fine." " Oh, yes ! " 
was the reply, " it is very good brandy. I like liquor — its 
taste and its effects — and that is just the reason why I never 
drinTc UP Upon another occasion, after a long ride in a 
drenching rain, a brother officer insisted upon Jackson's 
taking a drink with him, but he firmly replied : " No, sir, 
I cannot do it. I tell you / ami more afroAd of King Al- 
cohol tham, of all the huUets of the enemy. ''^ 

The young men of the country who think that it is manly 
to drink, and cowardly to refuse, would do well to study and 
imitate the example of these two great men. 

A great deal has been written of the famous dinner of 
sweet-potatoes to which Marion, the American partisan, in- 
vited the British officer. General Lee considered himself 
fortunate when he had a good supply of sweet-potatoes or a 
jug of buttermilk. 

General Ewell told the writer, not long before his death, 
that " being at General Lee's headquarters before the evacu- 
ation of Petersburg, and being unable to remain to dinner, 
the general insisted upon his taking his lunch, which he 
found to be two cold sweet-potatoes, of which he said he was 
very fond." 

Upon another occasion General Lee proposed to " treat " 
some of his officers, remarking, " I have just received a 
demijohn which I know is of the hestP The demijohn, 
tightly corked, was produced, drinking-vessels were brought 
out, and all gathered around in eager expectancy, when the 
general filled the glasses and cups to the brim — not with old 



172 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" Cognac " or " Bourbon " — ^but with fresh buttermilk, which 
a kind lady, knowing his taste, had sent him. He seemed 
to enjoy greatly the evident disappointment of some of the 
company when they ascertained the true character of their 
" treat." 

Luxuries which friends sent for his mess-table went regru- 
larly to the sick and wounded in the hospitals, and he was 
accustomed to say, " I am content to share the rations of my 
men." 

As showing the impression which Lee's mode of living 
made upon a disinterested foreigner, we give an extract from 
an account of a visit to his headquarters in the autumn of 
1862, written by an English officer : 

" In visiting the headquarters of the Confederate gen- 
erals, but particularly those of General Lee, any one accus- 
tomed to see European armies in the field cannot fail to be 
struck with the great absence of all the ' pomp and circum- 
stance of war ' in and around their encampments. Lee's head- 
quarters consisted of about seven or eight pole-tents, pitched 
with their backs to a stake-fence, upon a piece of ground so 
rocky that it was unpleasant to ride over it, its only recom- 
mendation being a little stream of good water which flowed 
close by the general's tent. In front of the tents were some 
three four-wheeled wagons, drawn up without any regularity, 
and a number of horses roamed loose about the field. The 
servants, who were of course slaves, and the mounted sol- 
diers, called ' couriers,' who always accompany each general 
of division in the field, were unprovided with tents, and slept 
in or under the wagons. Wagons, tents, and some of the 
horses, were marked ' U. S.,' showing that part of that huge 
debt in the North has gone to furnishing even the Confed- 
erate generals with camp-equipments. Ko guard or sentries 
were to be seen in the vicinity : no crowd of aides-de-camp 
loitering about, making themselves agreeable to visitors, and 
endeavoring to save their general from receiving those who 
have no particular business. A large f ann-house stands close 



HIS SELF-DENIAL FOR THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 173 

hj, which, in any other army, would have been the general's 
residence, pro tern. / but, as no liberties are allowed to be 
taken with personal property in Lee's army, he is particular 
in setting a good example himself. His staff are crowded 
together, two or three in a tent ; none are allowed to carry 
more baggage than a small box each, and his own kit is but 
very httle larger. Every one who approaches him does so 
with marked respect, although there is none of that bowing 
and flourishing of forage-caps which occurs in the presence 
of European generals ; and, while all honor him and place 
implicit faith in his courage and ability, those with whom he 
is most intimate feel for him the affection of sons to a father." 

He always manifested the liveliest interest in the welfare 
of his men, and was deeply touched by their hardships and 
privations. Being invited upon one occasion to dine at a 
house where an elegant dinner was served, it is related that 
he declined all of the rich viands offered him, dined on bread 
and beef, and quietly said in explanation to the lady of the 
house, " I cannot consent to be feasting while my poor sol- 
diers are nearly starving." 

In the same spirit he wrote to some young officers who 
were getting up a grand military ball : " I do not think this 
a fit time for feasting or unseemly merry-making. I am al- 
ways gratified to see your names figure among the gallant 
defenders of the country. I confess that I have no desire 
just now to see them conspicuous among the promoters of a 
' Grand Military Ball,' or any thing of that character." 

In November, 1863, the City Council of Eichmond passed 
a resolution to purchase for him an elegant mansion, as a 
small token of the high esteem in which he was held by the 
city which he had so long defended. " Arlington " was in the 
hands of the United States Government, the " White House " 
on York River (the house of Washington's early wedded life) 
had been ruthlessly burned by Federal soldiers, his splendid 
estate had nearly all passed from his control, and his salary, 
in Confederate scrip, was utterly inadequate to support in 



174 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

proper style his invalid wife and accomplished daughters. 
These facts were known to the city authorities, and they but 
reflected the popular wish in the action which they took. 

But, when General Lee heard of it, he wrote as follows 
to the president of the Council : 

" I assure you, sir, that no want of appreciation of the 
honor conferred upon me by this resolution, or insensibility 
to the kind feelings which prompted it, induces me to ask, 
as I most respectfully do, that no further proceedings be 
taken with reference to the subject. The house is not neces- 
sary to the use of my family, and my own duties will pre- 
vent my residence in Richmond. 

" I should, therefore, be compelled to decline the gener- 
ous offer, and I trust that whatever means the City Council 
may have to spare for this purpose may be devoted to the 
relief of the families of our soldiers in the field, who are 
more in want of assistance, and more deserving of it, than 
myseK." 

At the close of the war, offers of pecuniary assistance 
poured in upon him from all quarters, but he steadfastly re- 
fused to receive them. An English nobleman, thinking that 
he would rejoice in some place of retreat, wrote to offer him 
a splendid country-seat and a handsome annuity. He re- 
plied : " I am deeply grateful, but I cannot consent to desert 
my native State in the horn' of her adversity. I must abide 
her fortunes and share her fate." 

Soon after he went to Lexington, he was visited by an 
agent of a certain insurance company, who offered him their 
presidency, at a salary of ten tJwusand dollars per annum ; he 
was then receiving only three thousand from the college. 

He told the agent that he could not give up the position 
he then held, and could not properly attend to the duties of 
both. 

" But, general," said the agent, " we do not want you to 
discharge any duties. "We simply wish the use of your 
name ; that will abundantly compensate us." 



HIS SELF-DENIAL FOR THE GOOD OF OTHERS. I75 

" Excuse me, sir," was the prompt and decided rejoinder ; " I 
cannot consent to receive pay for services I do not render." 

His letter-book is full of responses to letters offering him 

direct assistance, or positions where he could realize large 

pecimiary returns. A few of these wiU serve as specimens 

of the whole : 

" White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., August 26, 1869. 

" Mr. E. W . 

" Mt dear Sib : I received, this mail, your letter of the 
19th inst. ; and though truly sensible of your kindness, and high- 
ly appreciating the feelings which prompted your offer, I am 
compelled most reluctantly to decline it. I will retain your 
letter as a mark of your esteem, and the most pleasing evidence 
of your regard ; and though my losses by the war have been 
heavy, as you state, they are light in comparison to other things 
all have to bear, and are not worth consideration. Thanking 
you most sincerely for your generous purpose, 

" I am most truly yours, R. E. Lee." 

" Lexington, Va., May 21, 1866. 

" Mr. H. E , Salem, Franklin County, Tenn. 

" Mt dear Sib : I have received your letter of the 12th inst., 
and thank you most cordially for your kind proposition. I shall 
be unable to take any part in the conduct of the business in 
which you propose to engage, or to render any adequate service 
in return for the benefits I might receive. With a due sense, 
therefore, of your generous offer, and a grateful appreciation of 
the motives which induced it, I am constrained to decline it. 

" Wishing you every success in the prosecution of your pur- 
pose, and all happiness in its accomplishment, 

" I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, 
(Signed) " R E. Lee." 

The following reply to an earnest call made upon him by 
old friends speaks for itself : 

"Lexington, Va., March 18, 1870. 
" General Cobse, FsAiirois L. Smith, E. H. Millee, 0, S. Lee, ) 
Edgae Snowdeu", etc., Alexandria, Va. ) 

"Gentlemen: I am deeply sensible of the kind feelings 
which prompted your communication of the 12th inst. ; any 



176 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

proposition emanating from the citizens of Alexandria would 
command my earnest consideration, but one fraught with so much 
interest to the city, and filled with such considerate kindness to 
myself, demands my serious attention and frank reply. There 
is no community to which my affections more strongly cling 
than that of Alexandria, composed of my earliest and oldest 
friends, my kind school-fellows, and faithful neighbors. Its in- 
terests and prosperity are of such paramount importance to me 
that it is my desire to do any thing to promote them. It is on 
this account that I must decline the proposition you have made 
me. I do not feel able to undertake the business you would 
assign me, and it would not be honest in me to accept it. My 
health has been so feeble this winter that I am only waiting to 
see the effect of the opening spring before relinquishing my 
present position. I am admonished by my feelings that my 
years of labor are nearly over, and my inclinations point to 
private life. You require the energy of a younger man to push 
forward your communications with the interior of the country, 
to economize the construction and working of your roads, and to 
afford cheap transportation for the products of agriculture to 
your port, and the articles of commerce in return to the interior. 
Without knowing more than any other deeply interested in the 
welfare of your city, the president of your roads seems to me to 
have been earnest and indefatigable in their advancement, and I 
would recommend him for the office rather than myself. 

" With my earnest wishes for the prosperity of Alexandria, 
and the individual happiness of you all, 

** I am, with great regard, your obedient servant, 

"R. E.Lee." 

Nearly every mail brought him some such proposition, 
and just a short time before his death a large and wealthy 
corporation in the city of New York offered him a salary of 
fifty thousand dollars per annum if he would consent to be- 
come their president. 

But he steadfastly refused all such offers, and quietly pur- 
sued his chosen path of duty. 

He did accept, not long before bis death, the presidency 



HIS SELF-DENIAL FOR THE GOOD OF OTHERS. I77 

of the Yalley Railroad Company ; but in this he yielded his 
personal wishes to the views of the wannest friends of the 
college, who urged that his acceptance of the position was 
necessary to the construction of the road, and that this was 
essential to the development of the resources of the Yalley, 
and the highest prosperity of Lexington and of the college 
itself. 

When the Board of Trustees of Washington College 
called General Lee to its presidency, they were anxious to 
fulfill the wishes and expectations of the Southern public by 
paying such salary as his wide reputation and invaluable ser- 
vices were entitled to receive. This feeling increased as they 
saw the college expand imder his magic touch, until, from an 
institution with five professors and some sixty students, it 
numbered more than twenty instructors and over four hun- 
di'ed students. But they always found an insurmountable 
difficulty in the steadfast refusal of General Lee to receive a 
salary beyond what he conceived the funds of the institution 
and fairness to the other members of the Faculty would 
justify. It was in vain that the Faculty united with the 
ti-ustees in urging that the prosperity of the college was due 
to his influence ; that his name had secured the endowment 
whereby the additional professors were appointed, and had 
attracted young men from every State ; that they were offer- 
ing him no gratuity, but simply a compensation for his in- 
valuable services. His firm reply was, " My salary is as large 
as the college ought to pay." 

The trustees were anxious to have built for him a hand- 
some residence, and friends in different sections contributed 
fimds for the purpose, but he insisted that other buildings 
were needed far more than a new house for himseK. The 
trastees finally made the appropriation without his knowl- 
edge, and he then superintended the building himself, re- 
duced its cost considerably below the amount appropriated, 
and was very careful always to speak of it not as his own (as 
the trustees meant it to be), but as " the president's house." 
12 



178 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

In the spring of 18T0 the Board of Trustees delicately 
deeded to Mrs. Lee this house, and settled on her an annuity 
of three thousand dollars. When the general heard of it, he 
wrote, in Mrs. Lee's behalf, a polite but firm letter, declining 
the offer. 

The trustees still delicately adhered to their purpose, had 
the deed quietly recorded, and after General Lee's death sent 
Mrs. Lee a check for the annuity. But this noble Yirginia 
matron had caught the spirit of her husband, and returned 
the check with a beautiful letter declining to allow any of 
the funds of the college to be diverted to her private use, or 
to receive for her family any part of the property of the insti- 
tution. 

Certain wealthy friends and admirers of General Lee one 
smnmer, at the "White Sulphur Springs, put on foot a scheme 
to raise fifty thousand dollars which they designed to be used 
by the college for his benefit during his life, and to revert to 
his family at his death. He declined to allow this fund to be 
raised, except on the condition that, instead of going to the 
benefit of his family, it should be a permcment endowtnent 
of the president's chair of the college. 

An agent of the college had been, without authority, 
making very free use of General Lee's name in his efforts to 
secure contributions ; and, when the general heard of it, he 
promptly wrote the following protest : 

" Washington College, Lexington, Va,, March 1, 1866. 
*' Hon. JoHir W. Beookeitbeough, Rector, \ 

Washington College, Lexington, Va. ) 

" My deak Sir : My attention has been called to the inclosed 
slip, which seems to have been taken from a Memphis paper. I 

do not know what instructions the Rev. Mr. received from 

the Board of Trustees ; but he certainly had no authority from 
me to use my name in soliciting contributions to the college 
with a view of increasing my salary. If such is the ' main ob- 
ject 'of his mission, as stated, he cannot hope to succeed ; and I 
should regret if any friend of mine gave a dollar for the purpose. 



HIS SELF-DENIAL FOR THE GOOD OF OTHERS. I79 

" It is difficult to know to what extent Mr. is responsible 

for the statement ; but it is calculated to injure the college, and 
I request that the committee of the Board of Trustees will take 
measures to prevent my being presented to the country in so 
reprehensible a manner. 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

(Signed) - "R.E.Lee." 

The following indorsement upon a letter from Rev. S. 
D. Stuart to the rector of the college will further illustrate 
the feelings of this noble man : 

" Lexington, Va., January 23, 1866, 
" The letter of the Rev. S. D. Stuart, of the 15th inst., is re- 
spectfully returned to Judge John W. Brockenbrough. 

" I am deeply sensible of my obligations to the Hon. B. 
"Wood for his good opinion, his interest in the South, and for 
the repetition of his conditional offer of aid to Washington Col- 
lege. Upon giving the subject additional reflection, I cannot 
reach the conclusion that any acceptance of his proposition 
would be beneficial. The college would gain the sum of money 
he generously proposes to give, but it would lose a great amount 
in other respects. I am not in a position to make it proper for 
me to take a public part in the affairs of the country. 

" I have done, and continue to do, in my private capacity, 
all in my power to encourage our people to set manfully to work 
to restore the country, to rebuild their homes and churches, to 
educate their children, and to remain with their States, their 
friends and countrymen. But, as a prisoner on parole, I cannot 
with propriety do more ; nor do I believe it would be advanta- 
geous for me to do so. 

(Signed) " R. E, Lee." 

The refusal of General Lee to receive presents or gi*atui- 
ties was but one of the many points in which he resembled 
George "Washington, " the Father of his Country." How 
far he differed from many of our leading public men of the 
present day, in this respect, we will not here discuss. 



180 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

Up to his fatal illness, General Lee was busily engaged in 
collecting material, and seemed very anxious to write a his- 
tory of his campaigns ; but his object was to vindicate others 
rather than himself. He said to one of his generals, in a 
letter asking for his official reports : " I shall write this his- 
tory, not to vindicate myself, or to promote my own reputa- 
tion. I want that the world shall know what my poor boys, 
with then* small numbers and scant resources, succeeded in 
accomplishing." 

He sent out to many of his old officers the following cir- 
cular : 

"Near Carterstille, Cumberland County, Va., July 31, 1865. 
" General : I am desirous that the bravery and devotion 
of the Army of Northern Virginia be correctly transmitted to 
posterity. This is the only tribute that can now be paid to the 
worth of its noble officers and soldiers. And I am anxious to 
collect the necessary information for the history of its cam- 
paigns, including the operations in the Valley and Western Vir- 
ginia, from its organization to its final surrender. I have copies 
of my reports of the battles, commencing with those around 
Richmond in 1862, to the end of the Pennsylvania campaign ; 
but no report of the campaign in 1864, and of the operations of 
the winter of 1864-'65, to the 1st of April, 1865, has been writ- 
ten ; and the corps and division reports of that period which had 
been sent to headquarters before the abandonment of the lines 
before Petersburg, with all the records, returns, maps, plans, 
etc., were destroyed the day before the army reached Appomat- 
tox Court-House. My letter-books, public and confidential, were 
also destroyed, and the regular reports and returns transmitted 
to the adjutant-general at Richmond have been burned or lost. 
Should you have copies of the reports of the operations of your 
command within the period specified (from May 1, 1864, to 
April 1, 1865), or should you be able to renew them, I Avill 
be greatly obliged to you to send them to me. Should you 
be able to procure other reports of other commands, returns 
of the effective strength of the army of any of the battles from 
the first Manassas to the 1st of April, 1865, or copies of my 



HIS SELF-DENIAL FOR THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 181 

official orders, letters, etc., you will confer an additional favor by 
sending them to me. Very respectfully and truly, 

(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 

To his trusted lieutenant, General J, A. Early, who was 
at this time in voluntary exile, he wrote the following letter : 

" Lexington, Va., November 22, 1865. 
" General J. A. Eaely. 

" My dear General : I received last night your letter of the 
30th ult., which gave me the first authentic information of you 
since the cessation of hostilities, and relieved the anxiety I had 
felt on your account. I am very glad to hear of your health 
and safety, but regret your absence from the country, though I 
fully understand your feelings on the subject. I think the South 
requires the presence of her sons more now than at any period 
of her history, and I determined at the outset of her difficulties 
to share the fate of my people. 

" I wish you every happiness and prosperity wherever you 
may go, and in compliance with your request inclose a state- 
ment of your services, which I hope may answer your purpose. 
You will always be present to my recollections. 

" I desire, if not prevented, to write a history of the cam- 
paigns in Virginia. All my records, books, orders, etc., were 
destroyed in the conflagration and retreat from Richmond. 
Only such of my reports as were printed are preserved. 

"Your reports of your operations in 1864 and '65 were 
among those destroyed. 

" Cannot you repeat them, and send me copies of such letters, 
orders, etc., of mine (including that last letter to which you 
refer), and particularly give me your recollection of our effective 
strength at the principal battles ? 

" My only object is to transmit the truth, if possible, to pos- 
terity, and do justice to our brave soldiers. 

*' Most truly your friend, 

"R. E. Leb.» 

He delayed the fulfillment of this cherished purpose be- 
cause he was refused copies of his captured ofl3.cial papers 



182 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

whicli are under charge of the War Department in Washing- 
ton, and was unwilling to write his history without these. 

But he would sometimes make it an objection to writing 
at all, that he would be obliged to relate facts which would 
cause the conduct of others to be subjected to criticism and 
censure. ]^o man was ever more careful of the feelings or 
reputation of others, or more ready to submit quietly to 
wrong himself rather than have censure cast upon his com. 
rades or subordinates. 

General Lee had nothing of nepotism about him, but 
meted out the evenest justice to all, except that he did not 
promote his relatives as rapidly as he did others. 

His sou Robert served as a private in the ranks of the 
Bockbridge Artillery, sharing with his comrades of that crack 
corps all of their dangers, hardships, drudgery, and priva- 
tions, when a hint from his father would have secured him 
promotion to some place of honor. The general told, with 
evident relish, that during the battle of Sharpsburg he became 
very uneasy about Robert — knowing that his battery had 
suffered severely, and not hearing any thing from him. At 
last he made it convenient to ride up to the battery, which had 
just been relieved from a very perilous position where it had 
suffered fearful loss, and had his fears increased by not rec- 
ogizing his son among the men. To the hearty gi'eeting of 
the brave fellows he replied, " Well ! you have done nobly 
to-day, but I shall be compelled to send you in again." 

"Win you, general?" said a powder-begrimed youth 
whom he did not recognize, until he spoke, as liis son Robert, 
" Well, boys ! come on ; the general says we must go in 
again, and you know he is in the habit of having his own 
way about such matters." 

Thus the anxiety of the commander-in-chief was relieved, 
and his son went gayly to work at his gun and contribute 
his full share toward " keeping those people back." 

I have the following from the lips of the distinguished 
officer who related it : 



HIS SELF-DENIAL FOR THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 183 

When General was compelled by failing health to 

ask to be relieved from a certain important command, he 
went to Richmond to confer with President Davis as to his 
successor, and to endeavor to impress upon him the very 
great importance of the district, and of the commander being 
a man of fine abilities. Mr. Davis fully sympathized with 
his views, and, after reflection, said : " I know of no better 
man for that position than General Custis Lee. To show you 
my estimate of his ability, I will say that, when some time 
ago I thought of sending General Robert Lee to command the 
Western Army, I had determined that his son Custis should 
succeed him in command of the Army of Northern Yir- 
ginia. Now, I wish you to go up and see General Lee, teU 
him what I say, and ask him to order General Custis Lee to 
the command of that department. Tell him I will make his 
son major-general, lieutenant-general, or, if need be, full gen- 
eral, so that he may rank any officer likely to be sent to that 
department." 

General promptly sought Lee's headquarters, deliv- 
ered Mr. Davis's message, and m'ged a compliance. 

But to all of his arguments and entreaties the old chief- 
tain had but one reply : " I am very much obliged to Mr. 
Davis for his high opinion of Custis Lee. I hope that, if he 
had the opportunity, he would prove himself in some meas- 
ure worthy of that confidence. But he is an untried man 
in the field, and I cannot appoint him to that command. 
Yery much against his wishes and my own, Mr. Davis has 
kept him on his personal staff, and he has had no oppor- 
tunity to prove his ability to handle an army in the field. 
Whatever may be the opinion of others, I cannot pass by 
my tried officers and take for that important position a com- 
paratively new man — especially when that man is my own 
son. Mr. Davis can make the assignment if he thinks prop- 
er — I shall certainly not do so." 

The records of the Confederate War Department would 
be searched in vain for any word of General Lee seeking 
place either for himself or his sons. 



184 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

Kev. Dr. T. Y. Moore, so long pastor of the First Pres- 
byterian Church in Richmond, and who recently died in Nash- 
ville, Tenn., related the following in his memorial sermon : 

" After the cartel for the exchange of prisoners during 
the war was suspended, one of his own sons was taken prison- 
er. A Federal officer of the same rank in Libby Prison sent 
for me, and wished me to write to General Lee, begging 
him to obtain the consent of the Confederate authorities to 
his release, provided he could, as he felt sure would be the 
case, induce the United States authorities to send General 
Lee's son through the lines to effect this special exchange. 

" In a few days a reply was received in which, with the 
lofty spirit of a Roman Brutus, he respectfully but firmly de- 
clined to ask any favor for his own son that could not he 
asked for the humblest soldier in the army. The officer, 
while disappointed, was yet so struck with the unselfish 
nobleness of the reply, that he begged the letter from me as a 
memento of General Lee, adding, with deep emphasis, ' Sir, 
I regard him as the greatest man now living.' " 

It will add greatly to the force of the above incident 
to recall the fact that the son (General "W. H. F. Lee) was at 
home, severely wounded, at the time he was captured ; that 
his accomplished wife was lying at the point of death, and act- 
ually died before his release (the Federal authorities refusing 
to allow General Custis Lee to take the place of his brother, 
as he nobly offered to do) and that he was closely confined in a 
casemate at Fortress Monroe, and threatened with death by 
hanging, in retaliation for alleged cruelty on the part of the 
Confederate authorities toward certain Federal prisoners. 

Only those who know how devoted to his children Gen- 
eral Lee was can appreciate the noble seK-denial which he 
exercised when, under these circumstances, the tenderest feel- 
ings of the loving father were sacrificed to his sense of duty 
to his country. 

Not long after his West Virginia campaign, he was rec- 
ommending a certain officer for promotion, when a friend 



HIS SELF-DENIAL FOR THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 185 

urged liim not to do so, alleging that this officer was accus- 
tomed to speak very disparagingly and disrespectfully of Gen- 
eral Lee. The quick reply was, " The question is not what he 
thinks or is pleased to say about me, but what I think of 
him. I have a high opinion of this officer as a soldier, and 
shall most unquestionably recommend his promotion, and do 
all in my power to secure it." 

Surely the pages of the world's history afford no nobler 
example of self-denial for the good of others than that of the 
modest, unobtrusive life of the Christian soldier and patriot 
— ^K. E. Lee. 



CHAPTEE YI. 

HIS WiLNT OF BITTEENESS TOWAKD THE NOKTH, BUT DEVOTION 
TO THE mTERESTS OF THE SOUTH. 

General Lee was conspicuous for a want of bitterness 
toward the United States authorities and the people of the 
!North. He certainly had much which others would have 
taken as an occasion of bitterness, if not absolute hatred. 
While he was suffering privation and hardship, and meeting 
danger in opposing what he honestly believed to be the 
armed hosts of oppression and wrong, his home was seized 
(and held) by the Government, and his property destroyed. 
When at the close of the war he faithfully and scrupulously 
sought to carry out his parole, avoided the popular applause 
that his people were everywhere ready to give him, and 
sought a quiet retreat where he could labor for the good of 
the young men of the South, his motives were impugned, his 
actions were misrepresented, and certain of the ]S^orthern 
journals teemed with bitter slanders against him, while a 
United States grand-jury (in violation of the terms of his 
parole, as General Grant himself maintained) found against 
him an indictment for "treason and rebellion." And yet 
amid all these provocations he uttered no word of bitterness, 
and always raised his voice for moderation and charity. 

Upon several occasions, the writer has heard him rebuke 
others for bitter expressions, and the severest terms he was 
accustomed to employ were such as he used to his son Eob- 



WANT OF BITTERNESS TO THE NORTH. 187 

ert, to whom lie said one day, as he was bravely working one 
of the guns of the Eockbridge Ai-tillery which was engaged 
in a fierce fight with the enemy: "That's right, my son; 
di'ive those people back." 

"WTien told of Jackson's wound, and of his plan to cut 
Hooker off from the United States ford, and drive back his 
army on Chan cell orsville, the eye of the great captain 
sparkled, and his face flushed as he remembered that in the 
loss of his lieutenant he had been "deprived of his right 
arm ; " but his quiet reply was, " General Jackson's plans 
shall be carried out — those people shall be driven to-day." 

He used sometimes to speak of the enemy as " General 
Meade's people," " General Grant's people," or " our friends 
across the river." 

When in 1863 the head of the Army of N"orthern Vir- 
ginia was tm'ned northward, and it was understood that an 
invasion of Pennsylvania was contemplated, there resounded 
through the South a cry for retaliation there for the desola- 
tion inflicted by the Federal armies upon our own fair land. 
The newspapers recounted the outrages that we had endured, 
painted in vivid colors the devastation of large sections of 
the South, reprinted the orders of Pope, Butler, and others 
of like spirit, and called upon the ofiicers and men of the 
Army of Northern Virginia to remember these things when 
they reached the rich flelds of Pennsylvania, arguing that 
the best way of bringing the war to a successful termination 
was to let the people of the North feel it as we had done. 
Prominent men urged these views on General Lee, and it 
would not have been surprising if he had so far yielded to 
the popular clamor as to have at least winked at depredations 
on the part of his soldiers. But he did not for a single 
moment forget that he led the army of a people who pro- 
fessed to be governed by the principles of Christian civiliza- 
tion, and that no outrages on the part of others could justify 
him in departing from these high principles. Accordingly, 
as soon as the head of his column crossed the Potomac, he 



1S8 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

issued a beautiful address, in whicli lie called upon his men 
to abstain from pillage and depredations of every kind, and 
enjoined upon his officers to bring to speedy punishment all 
offenders against this order. If this had been intended for 
effect merely, while the soldiers were to be allowed to plunder 
at will, nothing further would have been necessary. But we 
find him publishing the following, which forms one of the 
brightest pages in the history of that unhappy strife, will go 
down to coming ages in vivid contrast with the orders of 
Pope, Butler, Sheridan, and other Federal generals, and will 
for all time reflect the highest honor alike upon our Chris- 
tian chieftain and the army he led : 

" General Orders JVb. 73. 

" Headquarters Army Northern Virginia, ) 
Chambersburq, Pa., June 21, 1863. ) 

" The commanding general has observed with marked satis- 
faction the conduct of the troops on the march, and confidently 
anticipates results commensurate with the high spirit they have 
manifested. No troops could have displayed greater fortitude, 
or better have performed the arduous marches of the past tea 
days. Their conduct in other respects has, with few exceptions, 
been in keeping with their character as soldiers, and entitles 
them to approbation and praise. 

" There have been, however, instances of forgetfulness on 
the part of some that they have in keeping the yet unsullied 
reputation of the army, and that the duties exacted of us by 
civilization and Christianity are not less obligatory in the country 
of the enemy than in our own. The commanding general con- 
siders that no greater disgrace could befall the army, and 
through it our whole people, than the perpetration of the bar- 
barous outrages upon the innocent and defenseless, and the 
wanton destruction of private property, that have marked the 
course of the enemy in our own country. Such proceedings not 
only disgrace the perpetrators and all connected with them, but 
are subversive of the discipline and efficiency of the army, and 
destructive of the ends of our present movements. It must be 



WANT OF BITTERNESS TO THE NORTH. 189 

remembered that we make war only upon armed men, and that 
we cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people have suf- 
fered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all whose abhor- 
rence has been excited by the atrocities of our enemy and of- 
fending against Him to whom vengeance belongeth, and with- 
out whose favor and support our efforts must all prove in vain. 

" The commanding general, therefore, earnestly exhorts the 
troops to abstain, with most scrupulous care, from unnecessary 
or wanton injury to private property ; and he enjoins upon all 
officers to arrest and bring to summary punishment all who shall 
in any way offend against the orders on this subject. 

" R. E. Lbe, GenemV 

That these orders were in some instances violated is not 
denied, but both General Lee and his officers exerted them- 
selves to have them carried out, and with almost perfect suc- 
cess, as even the Northern press abundantly testified at 
the time. 

No blackened ruins, desolated fields, or wanton destruc- 
tion of private property, marked the line of his march. His 
official dispatches are blotted by no wicked boast of the num- 
ber of barns burned, and the amount of provisions destroyed, 
until he had made the country " such a waste that even a 
crow flying over would be compelled to carry his rations ! " 
But the order above quoted not only expressed the feelings 
of the commander-in-chief, but was an index to the conduct 
of his officers and the troops under their command. 

When General John B. Gordon, at the head of his splen- 
did brigade of Georgians, entered York, there was great con- 
sternation among the people, and he sought to quiet their 
fears by making the following address to a crowd of women 
gathered on the street : " Our Southern homes have been 
pillaged, sacked, and burned ; our mothers, wives, and little 
ones, driven forth amid the brutal insults of your soldiers. 
Is it any wonder that we fight with desperation ? A natural 
revenge would prompt us to retaliate in kind, but wq scorn 
to war on women and children. "We are fighting for the 



190 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

God-given rights of liberty and independence," as handed 
down to us in the Constitution by our fathers. So fear not : 
if a torch is apphed to a single dwelling, or an insult offered 
to a female of your town by a soldier of this command, 
point me out the man, and you shall have his life." 

Other officers were equally earnest in carrying out Gen- 
eral Lee's orders and allaying the fears of the citizens, who 
were expecting to see the same depredations committed by 
the " rebels," that had marked the course of the " Union " 
troops all through the South. 

The people were utterly astonished at their lenient treat- 
ment, and were loud in their praise of " Lee and his hungry 
rebels." One intelligent and wealthy citizen wrote : " If it 
were not for the name of the thing, I would much rather 
have the rebels than the Union troops to camp on my prem- 
ises. The former committed much fewer depredations than 
the latter." 

It is said that one day General Lee dismounted and be- 
gan with his own hands to put up a fence that had been left 
do^vn ; and that several times he went in person and had 
soldiei-s arrested for slight depredations. 

No man, living or dead, ever heard General Lee utter an 
unkind word to a prisoner, or saw him maltreat in the slight- 
est degree any who fell into his power. And, when he was 
charged by the radical press with being responsible for al- 
leged " cruel treatment " of prisoners, he quietly said : " I 
court the most searching investigation into this matter." 

The following extract from his testimony before the con- 
gressional " reconstruction " committee may be appropriately 
introduced in this connection : 

" Question. By Mr. Howard : ' I wish to inquire whether 
you had any knowledge of the cruelties practised toward the 
Union prisoners at Libby Prison and on Belle Isle ? ' An- 
swer. ' I never knew that any cruelty was practised, and I 
have no reason to believe that it was practised. I can be- 
Keve, and have reason to believe, that privations may have 



WANT OF BITTERNESS TO THE NORTH. 191 

been experienced by tbe prisoners, because I know tbat pro- 
vision and shelter could not be provided for tbem.' 

Q. ' AYere you not aware that the prisoners were dying 
from cold and starvation ? ' A. ^1 was not.' 

" Q. ' Did these scenes come to your knowledge at all ? ' 
A. ' Never. No report was ever made to me about them. 
There was no call for any to be made to me. I did hear — 
it was mere hearsay — that statements had been made to the 
"War Department, and that every thing had been done to re- 
lieve them that could be done, even finally so far as to offer 
to send them to some other points — Charleston was one point 
named — if they would be received by the United States au- 
thorities and taken to their homes ; but whether this is true 
or not I do not know.' 

" Q. ' And of course you know nothing of the scenes of 
cruelty about which complaints have been made at those 
places' (Andersonville and Salisbury)? A. ' Nothing in the 
world, as I said before. I suppose they suffered from want 
of ability on the part of the Confederate States to supply 
their wants. At the very beginning of the war I knew that 
there was suffering of prisoners on both sides, but as far as I 
could I did every thing in my power to relieve them, and to 
establish the cartel which was agreed upon.' 

" Q. ' It has been frequently asserted that the Confed- 
erate soldiers feel more kindly toward the Government of 
the United States than any other people of the South. What 
are your observations on that point V A. ^ From the Con- 
federate soldiers I have heard no expression of any other 
opinion. They looked upon the war as a necessary evil, and 
went through it. I have seen them relieve the wants of Fed- 
eral soldiers on the field. The orders always were, that the 
whole field should be treated alike. Parties were sent out to 
take the Federal wounded as well as the Confederate, and 
the surgeons were told to treat the one as they did the other. 
These orders given by me were respected on every field.' 

" Q. ' Do you think that the good feeling on their part 



192 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

toward the rest of the people has continued since the close 
of the war ? ' A. ^1 know nothing to the contrary. I made 
several efforts to exchange the prisoners after the cartel was 
suspended. I do not know to this day which side took the 
initiative. I know there were constant complaints on both 
sides. I merely know it from public rumors. I offered to 
General Grant, around Richmond, that we should ourselves 
exchange all the prisoners in our hands. There was a com- 
munication from the Christian Commission, I think, which 
reached me at Petersburg, and made application to me for a 
passport to visit all the prisoners South. My letter to them, 
I suppose, they have. I told them I had not that author- 
ity, that it could only be obtained from the War Depart- 
ment at Richmond, but that neither they nor I could relieve 
the sufferings of the prisoners ; that the only thing to be 
done for them was, to exchange them ; and, to show that I 
would do whatever was in my power, I offered them to sen(J 
to City Point all the prisoners in Yirginia and North Caro- 
lina over which my command extended, provided they re- 
turned an equal number of mine, man for man. I reported 
this to the War Department, and received for answer that 
they would place at my command all the prisoners at the 
South if the proposition was accepted. I heard nothing 
more on the subject.' " 

The charge made against General Lee in some of the 
Northern papers of complicity, if not chief responsibility, in 
the alleged cruel treatment of prisoners was very annoying 
to one of his high sense of right ; but he did not permit 
himself to enter into any public defense. He did, however, 
express himself quite freely to his friends, and the following 
letter is now for the first time given to the public : 

"Lexington, Va., April IT, 1867. 
"2)r. Chaeles Caetee, No. 1632 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, Fa. 

"My dear Dk. Carter: I have received your letter of the 
9th inst., inclosing one to you from Mr. J. Francis Fisher, in re- 
lation to certain information which he had received from Bishop 



WANT OF BITTERNESS TO THE NORTH. 193 

"Wilmer. My respect for Mr. Fisher's wishes would induce me 
to reply fully to all his questions, but I have not time to do 
so satisfactorily ; and, for reasons which I am sure you both 
will appreciate, I have a great repugnance to being brought 
before the public in any manner. Sufficient information has 
been officially published, I think, to show that whatever sujffer- 
ings the Federal prisoners at the South underwent, were inci- 
dent to their position as prisoners, and produced by the desti- 
tute condition of the country, arising from the operations of 
war. The laws of the Confederate Congress and the orders of 
the War Department directed that the rations furnished pris- 
oners of war should be the same in quantity and quality as those 
furnished enlisted men in the army of the Confederacy, and that 
the hospitals for prisoners should be placed on the same footing 
as other Confederate States hospitals in all respects. It was 
the desire of the Confederate authorities to eflFect a continuous 
and speedy exchange of prisoners of war; for it was their true 
policy to do so, as their retention was not only a calamity to 
them, but a heavy expenditure of their scanty means of subsist- 
ence, and a privation of the services of a veteran army. Mr. 
Fisher or Bishop Wilmer has confounded my offers for the ex- 
change of prisoners with those made by Mr. Ould, the commis- 
sioner of the Confederate States. It was he that offered, when 
all hopes of effecting the exchange had ceased, to deliver all the 
Federal sick and wounded, to the amount of fifteen thousand, 
without an equivalent, provided transportation was furnished. 
Previously to this, I think, I offered to General Grant to send 
into his lines all the prisoners within my department, which then 
embraced Virginia and North Carolina, provided he would return 
me man for man ; and, when I informed the Confederate authori- 
ties of my proposition, I was told that, if it was accepted, they 
would place all the prisoners at the South at my disposal. I 
offered subsequently, I think to the committee of the United 
States Sanitary Commission, who visited Petersburg for the pur- 
pose of ameliorating the condition of their prisoners, to do the 
same. But my proposition was not accepted. I understand 
that Mr. Pollard, in his ' Lost Cause,' has devoted a chapter of 
his work to the subject of the exchange of prisoners ; I have not 
13 



194 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

read it, but, in a letter received from Mr. Ould, he stated that he 
had furnished Mr. Pollard with the facts for his chapter, and 
coiild vouch for their accuracy. Dr. Joseph Jones has recently 
published a pamphlet termed ' Researches upon Spurious Vac- 
cination," etc., issued from the University Medical Press, at 
Nashville, Tenn., in which he treats of certain diseases of the 
Federal prisoners at Andersonville and their causes, which I 
think would be interesting to you as a medical man, and would 
furnish Mr. Fisher with some of the information he desires. I 
therefore refer you to both of these works. And now I wish you 
to understand that what I have written is for your personal in- 
formation and not for publication, and to send as an expression 
of thanks to Mr. Fisher for his kind efforts to relieve the suffer- 
ings of the Southern people. 

" I am very much obliged to you for the prayers you offered 
for us in the days of trouble. Those days are still prolonged, 
and we earnestly look for aid to our merciful God. Should I 
have any use for the file of papers you kindly offer me, I will 
let you know. 

" All my family unite with me in kind regards to your wife 
and children. And I am, very truly, your cousin, 

(Signed) "R. E.Lee." 

As this charge of cruelty to Federal prisoners has been 
again and again reiterated, and as the direct charge against 
General Lee is again produced in a book just issued from the 
press, the following facts, which can be proved before any fair 
tribunal, should go on the record : 

1. The Confederate authorities gave to prisoners in their 
hands the same rations which they issued to their own soldiers^ 
and go/oe them the very hest accommodations which their 
scoMt means afforded. 

2. They were always anxious to exchange jprisoners.^ man 
for man, and, when this was rejected hy the Federal authori- 
ties., they offered to send home the prisoners in their hands 
without any equivalent. 

3. By refusing all propositions to exchange prisoners, 



WANT OF BITTERNESS TO THE NORTH. 195 

a/nd declining even to receive their own men without equiva- 
lent, the Federal authorities made tloemselves I'esponsihle for 
all the suffering, of l)oth Federal and Confederate prisoners, 
that ensued. 

4. And yet, notwithstanding these facts, it is susceptible 
of proof, from the official records of the Federal Department, 
that tJce suffering of Confederate 2)risoner8 in Federal prisons 
was much greater than that of Federal prisoners in Confed- 
erate prisons. Without going more fully into the question, 
the following figures from the report of Mr. Stanton, Secre- 
tary of War, in response to a resolution of the House of 
Kepresentatives calling for the number of prisoners on both 
sides and their mortality, are triumphantly submitted : 

In Prison. Died. 

tr. S. soldiers 260,940 22,526 

Confederates 200,000 26,500 

That is, the Confederate States held as prisoners sixty-one 
thousand men more than the Federals held of the Confeder- 
ates ; and yet the deaths of Federal prisoners fell below those 
of Confederates six tfcousand. 

Two Federal prisoners died out of every twenty-three ; 
while two out of every fifteen Confederates died in Federal 
prisons. The mortality was fifty per cent, greater in Federal 
prisons than in ours ! And, even if all that is charged against 
us were true. General Lee was in no way responsible, as he 
had no control whatever over the prisoners after they were 
turned over to the authorities at Richmond. 

Soon after the grand-jury found its indictment against 
General Lee, at a time when President Andrew Johnson was 
showing a purpose to carry out his threat to " make treason 
odious by hanging the chief of the rebel leaders," and when 
ultra men at the North were clamoring for vengeance for what 
they claimed as " the complicity of the South " in the assassi- 
nation of Mr. Lincoln, a party of friends were spending an 
evening at his house in Riclmiond, and the conversation nat- 
urally turned on these matters. Rev. Dr. led the con- 



196 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

versation in expressing, in terms of decided bitterness, tlie 
indignation of the South at the indictment of General Lee. 
The general pleasantly remarked, " Well ! it matters little 
what they may do to me ; I am old, and have but a short 
time to live anyhow," and very soon turned the conversation 

into other channels. Presently Dr. got up to go, and 

General Lee followed him out to the door and said to him 
very earnestly : " Doctor, there is a good old book which I 
read, and you preach from, which says, ' Love your enemies, 
bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and 
pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.' 
Do you think your remarks this evening were quite in the 
spirit of that teaching ? " 

Dr. made some apology for the bitterness which he 

felt and expressed, and General Lee added, with that peculiar 
sweetness of tone and manner that we remember so well : 
" I have fought against the people of the North because I 
believed they were seeking to wrest from the South dearest 
rights. But I have never cherished toward them bitter or 
vindictive feelings, and have never seen the day when I did 
not pray for them." 

If the world's history affords a sublimer spectacle than 
that of this stern warrior teaching a minister of the gospel 
of peace the duty of love to enemies, the present writer has 
failed to note it. 

It is related that one day during the war, as they were 
reconnoitring the countless hosts opposed to them, one of 
his subordinates exclaimed in bitter tones, " I wish those 
people were all dead ! " General Lee, with that inimitable 
grace of manner peculiar to him, promptly rejoined : " How 
can you say so, general ? Now, I wish that they were all at 
home attending to their own business, and leaving us to do 
the same." 

One day in the autumn of 1869, I saw General Lee 
standing at his gate, talking to a humbly-clad man, who 
turned off, evidently delighted with his interview, just as I 



WANT OF BITTERNESS TO THE NORTH. 197 

came up. After exchanging salutations, the general pleas- 
antly said, pointing to the retreating form, " That is one 
of our old soldiers who is in necessitous circumstances." I 
took it for granted that it was some veteran ^Confederate, and 
asked to what command he belonged, when the General 
quietly and pleasantly added, " He fought on the other side, 
hut we Truest not remember that against him nowP 

The man afterward came to my house and said to me, in 
speaking of his interview with General Lee : " Sir, he is the 
noblest man that ever lived. He not only had a kind word 
for an old soldier who fought against him, but he gave me 
some money to help me on my way." 

What a beautiful illustration of the teaching of the apos- 
tle : ... " If thine enemy hunger, feed him ; if he thii'st, 
give him drink ! " 

Upon the occasion of the delivery of an address at Wash- 
ington College by a certain distinguished orator. General 
Lee came to the writer and said : " I saw you taking notes 
during the address. It was in the main very fine ; but, if 
you propose publishing any report of it, I would suggest 
that you leave out all the bitter expressions against the 
North and the United States Government. They will do 
us no good under our present circumstances, and I think all 
such expressions undignified and unbecoming." 

Soon after the passage of some of the most objection- 
able of the so-called " Reconstruction Acts," two of the pro- 
fessors of the college were conversing with him, when one of 
them expressed himself in very bitter terms concerning the 
dominant party and their treatment of the people of the 
South. General Lee quietly turned to his table, and, picking 
up a MS. (which afterward proved to be his memoir of his 
father), read the following lines : 

" Learn from yon Orient shell to love thy foe, 
And store with pearls the hand that brings thee woe : 
Free like yon rock, from base, vindictive pride. 
Emblaze with gems the wrist that rends thy side ; 



198 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

Mark where yon tree rewards the stony shower 
"With fruit nectareous, or the balmy flower, 
All Nature cries aloud : shall man do less 
Than heijl the smiter, and the railer bless ? ' 



He then said that these lines were written " in Arabia 
and by a Mussulman, the poet of Shiraz — the immortal Ha- 
fiz," and quietly asked, " Ought not we who profess to be 
governed by the principles of Christianity to rise at least 
to the standard of this Mohammedan poet, and learn to 
forgive our enemies ? " 

The conduct of Lee's soldiers, after the close of the war, 
has excited the attention and elicited the admiration of the 
world. There was much in the state of things, just after 
the surrender, to excite the serious apprehension of thinking 
men that these disbanded soldiers would render the condi- 
tion of the South far worse by entering upon a career of 
lawlessness. After long exposure to the demoralizing influ- 
ences of the camp, and a long cessation from any industrial 
pursuit, these young men returned to find their fondly-cher- 
ished hopes blighted, their fortunes ruined, their fields laid 
waste, and, in not a few instances, blackened ruins marking 
the spot of their once-happy homes. It would not have 
been surprising if they had yielded to despair, and had sought 
redress by taking the law into their own hands. I claim to 
have thoroughly known the veterans of Lee's army, and to 
have had some peculiar opportunities of seeing them after 
the close of the war. Iq traveling very extensively through 
the South, I made it a point always to inquire after them, 
and the invariable response was, " They have gone to work, 
and are quiet, orderly members of society." Many of them, 
who had been raised in luxmy and ease, took off their coats 
and went into the com, tobacco, or cotton fields of the South, 
or entered upon other pm-suits, with a zeal and earnestness 
trully marvelous to those who did not know the stuff of 
which these heroic men were made. 



WANT OF BITTERNESS TO THE NORTH. I99 

They "accepted the situation," and, amid provocations 
and insults not a few, have proved themselves " loyal " to 
their every pledge — law-abiding citizens of whom any com- 
munity might be proud. 

If asked the explanation of this, the simplest answer 
would be, " The soldiers have continued to follow their Gorrh- 
mander-in-ohiefy General Lee was most scrupulous in ob- 
serving the tei-ms of his parole. He refused to attend politi- 
cal gatherings, avoided discussing the war, or its issues (ex- 
cept with intimate friends, and in the freedom of private in- 
tercourse), and gave the young men of the South a striking 
example of quiet submission to the United States authorities. 

He was accustomed to say : " I am now unfortunately so 
situated that I can do no good ; and, as I am anxious to do 
as little harm as possible, I deem it wisest for me to remain 
silent." And yet, as has been intimated, the good order and 
law-abiding spirit of the soldiers and people of the South 
were due, in no small measure, to the quiet example and in- 
fluence of this noble man. 

. His spirit and conduct at this critical period, when all 
eyes were turned to him, may be best illustrated by quoting 
freely from his private correspondence. 

And it may be well to give first the following letters, in 
which he endeavors to ameliorate the condition of some of 
his old soldiers : 

" Richmond, Va., April 25, 1865. 
^^ Lieutenant- General U. S. Geant, commanding) 
the Armies of the United States. S 

" General : I have awaited your arrival in Richmond to pro- 
pose that the men and officers of the Army of Northern Virginia, 
captured or surrendered on the 2d and 6th of April, or since 
that time, may be granted the same terms as given to those sur- 
rendered by me on the 9th. I see no benefit that will result by 
retaining tiiem in prison, but, on the contrary, think good may 
be accomplished by returning them to their homes. Indeed, if 
all now held as prisoners of war were liberated in the same man- 
ner, I think it would be advantageous. Should there, however, 



200 KEMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

be objections to this course, I would ask that exceptions be made 
in favor of the invalid officers and men, and that they be allowed 
to return to their homes on parole. I call your attention par- 
ticularly to General Ewell, the members of the reserves, local 
defense troops, Naval Battalion, etc. The local troops were 
not performing military duty, and the Naval Battalion fell in 
the line of march of the army for subsistence and protection. 
Understanding that you may not reach Richmond for some days, 
I take the liberty to forward this application for your considera- 
tion. Very respectfully your obedient servant, 

(Signed) "R. E. Lee, 6?mem/.» 

Richmond, Va., April 25, 1865. 
^^ Lieutenant- General U. S. Geant, commanding ) 
the Armies of the United States. S 

" General : I transmit for your perusal a communication 
just received, and ask your interposition in behalf of the authors. 
Similar statements have been made to me by officers of rank, 
which I have not thought it necessary to trouble you with, be- 
lieving that the obstacles mentioned would be removed as soon 
as possible. This is still my conviction, and I should consider it 
unnecessary to call your attention to the subject, had I not been 
informed of orders issued by the military commanders at Nor- 
folk and Baltimore, requiring oaths of paroled soldiers before 
permitting them to proceed on their journey. Officers and men 
on parole are bound in honor to conform to the obligations they 
have assumed. This obligation cannot be strengthened by any 
additional form or oath, nor is it customary to exact them. 
" Very respectfully your obedient servant, 

(Signed) " R. E. Lee, General." 

A good deal has been said about General Lee's application 
for " amnesty." I am enabled to publish, for the first time, 
both his letter to General Grant and his application to the 
President. He made this application not because he ever, 
for a single moment, admitted that he needed " pardon " for 
his course during the war, but simply that he might show to 
the world that he had no spirit of hostility to the Govern- 



WANT OF BITTERNESS TO THE NORTH. 201 

ment, and give to his own people an example of quiet sub- 
mission to " the powers that be." 

" Richmond, Va., June 13, 1865. 
" Lieutenant- General U. S. Geant, commanding ) 
the Armies of the United States. \ 

" General : Upon reading the President's proclamation of 
the 29th ult. I came to Richmond to ascertain what was proper 
or required of me to do, when I learned that, with others, I was 
to be indicted for treason by the grand-jury at Norfolk. I had 
supposed that the officers and men of the Army of Northern 
Virginia were, by the terms of their surrender, protected by the 
United States Government from molestation so long as they con- 
formed to its conditions. I am ready to meet any charges that 
may be preferred against me, and do not wish to avoid trial ; 
but, if I am correct as to the protection granted by my parole, 
and am not to be prosecuted, I desire to comply with the provi- 
sions of the President's proclamation, and therefore inclose the 
required application, which I request in that event may be acted 

on. I am, with great respect, 

" Your obedient servant, 
(Signed) "R. E. Lee." 

"Richmond, Va., June 13, 1865. 
" Eia Excellency Andeew Johnson, President of the United States. 

" SiE : Being excluded from the provisions of amnesty and 
pardon contained in the proclamation of the 29th ult,, I hereby 
apply for the benefits and full restoration of all rights and privi- 
leges extended to those included in its terms. I graduated at 
the Military Academy at West Point in June, 1829; resigned 
from the United States Army, April, 1861 ; was a general in the 
Confederate Army, and included in the surrender of the Army 
of Northern Virginia, April 9, 1865. 

" I have the honor to be, very respectfully, 

" Your obedient servant, 
(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 

In the uncertainty as to the future of the South, just 
after the close of the war, many of our best men were seri- 
ously thinking of seeking homes in foreign lands. General 



202 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

Lee's influence, more than any thing else, prevented this. 
The following is one of many letters which he wrote on that 
subject : 

"Near Cabterstillb, Va., July 31, 1865. 
" Colonel Richard L. Mauet, University of Virginia. 

" My dear Colonel : I received, by the last packet from 
Richmond, your letter of the 22d, inclosing an extract from a 
letter of your father to you, dated June 27th, and a project of a 
decree of the Emperor of Mexico, to encourage emigration of 
the planters of the South to that country. I was very glad to 
learn of the well-being of your father, and of his safe arrival 
in Mexico ; and have felt assured that, wherever he might be, 
he deeply sympathized with the suffering of the people of the 
South, and was ready to do all in his power to relieve them. I 
do not know how far their emigration to another land will 
conduce to their prosperity. Although prospects may not now 
be cheering, I have entertained the opinion that, unless pre- 
vented by circumstances or necessity, it would be better for 
them and the country to remain at their homes and share the 
fate of their respective States. I hope the efforts of your father 
will, however, facilitate the wishes and promote the welfare 
of all who may find it necessary or convenient to expatriate 
themselves, but should sincerely regret that either he or his 
should be embraced in that number. I beg you will present 
to him my most cordial thanks for his sympathy and interest in 
our welfare, and my best wishes for his happiness. For your 
own kind expressions toward me and my family, please accept 
my grateful thanks. My daughters unite with me in kindest 
regards to Mrs. Maury, and I am most truly and 

" Respectfully yours, 
(Signed) « R. E. Lee." 

The following letter, to the distinguished gentleman who 
so ably filled the Governor's chair of Yirginia during the 
gi'eater part of the war, will be read with interest, and gives 
a full view of his feehngs and pui-poses at the time : 



WANT OF BITTERNESS TO THE NORTH. 203 

"Neab Caeterstille, Va., August 28, 1865. 
"Hon. John Letchee, Lexington, Va. 

My dear Sir : I was much pleased to hear of your return to 
your home, and to learn by your letter of the 2d of the kindness 
and consideration with which you were treated during your ar- 
rest, and of the sympathy extended to you by your former con- 
gressional associates and friends in Washington. The concilia- 
tory manner in which President Johnson spoke of the South 
must have been particularly agreeable to one who has the inter- 
est of its people so much at heart as yourself. I wish that spirit 
could become more general. It would go far to promote confi- 
dence, and to calm feelings which have too long existed. The 
questions which for years were in dispute between the State and 
General Government, and which unhappily were not decided by 
the dictates of reason, but referred to the decision of war, having 
been decided against us, it is the part of wisdom to acquiesce in 
the result, and of candor to recognize the fact. 

" The interests of the State are therefore the same as those of 
the United States. Its prosperity will rise or fall with the wel- 
fare of the country. The duty of its citizens, then, appears tome 
too plain to admit of doubt. All should unite in honest efforts 
to obliterate the effects of war, and to restore the blessings of 
peace. They should remain, if possible, in the country ; promote 
harmony and good feeling ; qualify themselves to vote ; and 
elect to the State and general Legislatures wise and patriotic 
men, who will devote their abilities to the interests of the coun- 
try, and the healing of all dissensions. I have invariably recom- 
mended this course since the cessation of hostilities, and have en- 
deavored to practise it myself. I am much obliged to you for the 
interest you have expressed in my acceptance of the presidency 
of Washington College. If I believed I could be of advantage 
to the youth of the country, I should not hesitate. I have 
stated to the committee of trustees the objections which exist 
in my opinion to my filling the position, and will yield to their 
judgment. Please present me to Mrs. Letcher and your chil- 
dren, and believe me most truly yours, 

«R. E. Lee." 



204 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

The following characteristic letter illustrates several 
points of his character : 

"Neak Cartersville, Va., September 4, 1865. 
" Mr. A. M. Kkilet, Petersburg, Va. 

" My deae Sir : I only received yesterday your letter of the 
11th ult. I am exceedingly obliged to you for your kind propo- 
sition, and beg you to accept my sincere thanks for the manner 
in which it was conveyed. I am compelled to decline your offer, 
and, as I feel convinced that my services would be of no advan- 
tage to your enterprise, I do so with the less regret. I trust, 
however, you will carry out your design. A journal such as you 
propose will be of incalculable benefit to the country. It should 
be the object of all to avoid controversy, to allay passion, give 
full scope to reason and every kindly feeling. By doing this, and 
encouraging our citizens to engage in the duties of life with all 
their heart and mind, with a determination not to be turned aside 
by thoughts of the past and fears of the future, our country will 
not only be restored in material prosperity, but will be advanced 
in science, in virtue, and in religion. 

" Wishing you every success, I am most truly yours, 

(Signed) '• R. E. Lee." 

The following letter explains itself : 

"Near Cartersville, Va., September 4, 1865, 
" To the Count Joannes, No. 37 East 21 th Street, City of New TorTc. 

" Sir : I received a few days since your communication of 
the 14th ult., transmitting a copy of your published letter to 
the President of the United States. 

" Your arguments and conclusions are duly appreciated, and 
I am exceedingly obliged to you for the offer of your legal ser- 
vices to defend me against the charge of treason. Should they 
become necessary, they will be gratefully accepted. 

" In your letter to me you do the people of the South but 
simple justice in believing that they heartily concur with you in 
opinion in regard to the assassination of the late President Lin- 
coln. It is a crime previously unknown to this country, and one 
that must be deprecated by every American. 

" I am, very respectfully, R. E. Lee." 



DEVOTION TO THE INTERESTS OF THE SOUTH. 205 

The following, to a distinguislied naval officer, will show 
the character of the influence which General Lee exerted : 

" Nkar Cartersville, Va., September *?, 18C5. 
" Ca/ptain Josiah Tatnall, Savannah^ Ga. 

" Sir : I have received your letter of the 23d ult., and in re- 
ply will state the course I have pursued under circumstances 
similar to your own, and will leave you to judge of its propriety. 
Like yourself, I have, since the cessation of hostilities, advised all 
with whom I have conversed on the subject, who come within 
the terms of the President's proclamations, to take the oath of 
allegiance, and accept in good faith the amnesty offered. But I 
have gone further, and have recommended to those who were ex- 
cluded from their benefits, to make application under the^;>roui*so 
of the proclamation of the 29th of May, to be embraced in its 
provisions. Both classes, in order to be restored to their former 
rights and privileges, were required to perform a certain act, and 
I do not see that an acknowledgment of fault is expressed in 
one more than the other. The war being at an end, the South- 
ern States having laid down their arms, and the questions at is- 
sue between them and the Northern States having been decided, 
I believe it to be the duty of every one to unite in the restoration 
of the country, and the reestablishment of peace and harmony. 
These considerations governed me in the counsels I gave to 
others, and induced me on the 13th of June to make application 
to be included in the terms of the amnesty proclamation. I have 
not received an answer, and cannot inform you what has been the 
decision of the President. But, whatever that may be, I do not 
see how the course I have recommended and practised can prove 
detrimental to the former President of the Confederate States. 
It appears to me that the allayment of passion, the dissipation 
of prejudice, and the restoration of reason, will alone enable the 
people of the country to acquire a true knowledge and form a 
correct judgment of the events of the past four years. It will, I 
think, be admitted that Mr. Davis has done pothing more than 
all the citizens of the Southern States, and should not be held 
accountable for acts performed by them* in the exercise of what 
had been considered by them unquestionable right. I have too 



206 REMINISCEiSrCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E, LEE. 

exalted an opinion of the American people to believe that they 
will consent to injustice ; and it is only necessary, in my ojDinion, 
that truth should be known, for the rights of every one to be se- 
cured. I know of no surer way of eliciting the truth than by 
burying contention with the war. I inclose a copy of my letter 
to President Johnson, and feel assured that, liowever imperfectly 
I may have given you my views on the subject of your letter, 
your own high sense of honor and right will lead you to a satis- 
factory conclusion as to the proper course to be pursued in your 
own case. 

" With great respect and esteem, I am yom- most obedient 
servant, R. E. Lee." 

The following letter to the great scientist whom the whole 
world honored, and whose death was so widely deplored — 
who was General Lee's intimate friend, and in whose society 
in Lexington he seemed so much to delight — will be read 
with pecuhar interest : 

"Near Carterstille, Va., September 8, 1865. 
^^ Captain M. F. Maitry. 

" My dear Captain" : I have just received your letter of 
the 8th ult. We have certainly not found our form of govern- 
ment all that was anticipated by its original founders ; but that 
may be partly our fault in expecting too much, and partly in 
the absence of virtue in the people. As long as virtue was 
dominant in the republic, so long was the happiness of the peo- 
ple secure. I cannot, however, despair of it yet. I look for- 
ward to better days, and trust that time and experience, the 
great teachers of men, under the guidance of an ever-merciful 
God, may save us from destruction, and restore to us the bright 
hopes and prospects of the past. The thought of abandoning 
the country and all that must be left in it is abhorrent to my 
feelings, and I prefer to struggle for its restoration and share its 
fate, rather than to give up all as lost. I have a great admira- 
tion for Mexico ; the salubrity of its climate, the fertility of its 
soil, and the magnificence of its scenery, possess for me great 
charms ; but I still look*with delight upon the mountains of my 
native State. To remove our people with their domestics to a 



DEVOTION TO THE INTERESTS OF THE SOUTH. 207 

portion of Mexico which would be favorable to them, would be 
a work of much difficulty. Did they possess the means, and 
could the system of apprenticeship you suggest be established, 
the United States Government, I think, would interpose ob- 
stacles ; and under the circumstances there would be difficulty 
in persuading the freedmen to emigrate. Those citizens who 
can leave the country, and others who may be compelled to do 
so, will reap the fruits of your considerate labor ; but I shall be 
very sorry if your presence be lost to Virginia. She has now 
need for all of her sons, and can ill afford to spare you. I am 
very much obliged to you for all you have done for us, and hope 
your labors in the future may be as efficacious as in the past, 
and that your separation from us may not be permanent. Wish- 
ing you every prosperity and happiness, 

" I am most truly yours, 
(Signed) "R. E. Lee." 

The following, to the gallant and distinguished soldier 
with whom General Lee always preserved the kindliest re- 
lations, will be appropriately introduced in this connection : 

"Lexington, Ya., October 3, 1865. 
" General G. T. Beauregard, New Orleans, La. 

"Mt dear General: I have received your. letter of the 
1st ult., and am very sorry to learn that the papers of yourself 
and Johnston are lost, or at least beyond your reach ; but I hope 
they may be recovered. Mine never can be, though some may 
be replaced. Please supply all you can ; it may be safer to send 
them by private hands, if practicable, to Mr. Caskie, at Rich- 
mond, or to me at this place. I hope both you and Johnston 
will write the history of your campaigns. Every one should do 
all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in the hope 
that it may find a place in history, and descend to posterity. I 
am glad to see no indication in your letter of an intention to 
leave the country. I think the South requires the aid of her 
sons now more than at any period of her history. As you ask 
my purpose, I will state that I have no thought of abandoning 
her unless compelled to do so. 

" After the surrender of the Southern armies in April, the 



5J08 IIKMINISOENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

revolution in IIh; ojjiiiioiis iuid feelings of tho people seemed so 
(!()mj)l<!t(!, and Uk; niLiini of ilie Soiitliern StatciS into the Union 
of all tlie Stut(!S HO inevitable, that it became in my opinion the 
duty of every citizen, tho contest being virtually ended, to cease 
op|>ofiiti()n, and phioo hiniHelf in a j)OHition to serve the country. 
1 tliiircfoii!, upon th(! [iromul/^aiion of the ])roclamation of Presi- 
dent Johnson, of 29th of May, which indicated his policy in 
tiie rcistoration of peace, dettirmintid to comply with its require- 
ments, and applied on the 13th of Juno to be embraced within 
its provisions. I have not h<!iird the result of my jippliciation. 
Sinc(5 thciu, J have been elected to tlie presidency of Washing- 
ton College, and have entered upon tiie duties of the olTice, in 
the liope of Ixiing of sonu; service to the noble youth of our 
country. I urvA not tell you that true patriotism sonustimes 
requinis of men to act exacstly contrary, at one jxjriod, to that 
which it docs at anotiicr, and tin; motive whicjii impels ilunn — 
the .desire to do right — is pnuiisely the same. Tiie circum- 
stances which gov(!rn their actions, change, and their conduct 
must (lonform to tlu; n<!\v order of things. History is full of il- 
lustrations of this : Washington liims(;lf is an example of this. 
At one time he fought against the French, under Braddock, in 
the service of the King of Great Britain ; at another, he fought 
with the P^HiUch at Yorktown, und(!r tlu; orders of the Conti- 
n(!ntal Congn-ss of America, against him, lb; has not been 
branded by the world with nsproach for this, but his course has 
been api)lauded. With sentiments of groat esteem, 
" 1 am most truly yours, 

"K. 10. Lkic." 

IIo ehcrJHlujd tho liveliest intoroflt in those of his old sol- 
diorri who W(!re in vohintiiry exil(5. The following, to a gal- 
lant gcntloMiun, is a H})eciineu of niany hucJi letters wliich ho 
wrote : 

" LKxiN(iT(iN, Va., December 23, 1868. 
" Gonaral 0. M. Wri/OOX, OU)/ of Mexico. 

"My L)KAU G-UNKKAL: 1 have just received your letter of 
the 3d inst., and am very glad to hear of your safety and your 
health. 1 inclose a short statement of ycjur military career, 



DEVOTION TO TIIK INTKKKKTH OF THE KOUTJI. JiOli 



w 



liicli I li'/p<; will ;tij:-iw<;r you/' j<urj)OM(;. My l,iiii<; doers iio(, ))<;r- 
init tiiy <;(il,(;ring' iuto <J<!l!iilw, you muMl, Miipply l-li«;m ; iit'liUnr 
am I !ibl«! I.O nfJviKC you ou tli(5 ft(il>jcct of ttnUttluy^ tlicj military 
service of M<;xi(!0, execj)!- bo far aH my judj^ment and leeliiif^M 
may !>«• iiilernid IVom my own !i<;tioii. 'I'liey do not prompt mo 
f/O do HO, hut, on tlie contrary, imp';! me to remain witli my own 
I)eople an'l hliiire tli<;ir fortunes, unlcNH preventr;d l*y incxontble 
cAiciuitniiUKutH. I mu«t ntU-.r you to tinj pap<;iM for information 
aH to tin; «tate of the eountry. Vou will ««•<*, by tlx; irniisHap^o 
of J're«ident JolmHon, liis views and jujliey ; to wli.it degree lie 
will be KUKtained by Coupcram^ I cannot nny ; im yet, it liau 
hifiown no favorable diwposition that J am aware, of. I feai' the 
South lja« yr;t to HuHer many evilw, and it will rcjuire time, pa- 
tience, and fortitud(;, to heal her alliietionH. 

" Plea«e {)n;«<5nt my kinde.wt regardM to all our IViendM near 
you ; I feel a deep in</;reht in their wejfure, and hope, yu\t and 
they may enjoy all happim^WM and prowpcjrity. 

*' With gr<;at reMp<}ct, your friend and servant, 

"it. K Ijcjc." 

'i'he following a'lditiorial letter to General Beauregard 
needH no exj^la/iation : 

" Ia;j!£(«wow, Va., I)i.iimi.lii'.r 'M, \HW, 
" Qimmd 0, 'I', JJ»«Ar;uKaAiu), Nim OrleMm^ La. 

"My \i\ts.\i Ok.vkuai, : 1 have juHt received, by the hands 
of Captain iijt<;h<;nH, your lett«;r of the Ji.'ith ult,, and the coj^irjs 
of your public letters, telef^rams, and ref<ort«, mejition«;d in the 
acc^impanying list. I am swy much obliged t^> you for them, 
and hope you may soon be able to send n»e the remainder of 
such as I reqiie«t/;<l in my iinuwr letter. I f/iu«t bep;- you f/i 
present my heart-felt tliankw U> Miss Jllanche JJeniard, for her 
kindness in i>repsiring me tlwi (x>f>ies on foolscap, and say to he*f 
all that I would did op[>ortunity permit, . 

" 1 am ve/y (rhfl Ut learn that you have det/jrmirjed Ui r<tr 
main in the t^iuntry, and have set regularly to worl<. 1 think it 
is the courM; Indicated \)y true patriotisfn, .My re//iark« in my 
lV>rmer le'tU;r were not iiiUjnded </> 'juesi.io/i the, conduct of hv/uth- 
ein c/iil/Jiuti \/(iit)iii the war, biit to hliow that, what j>atriotism 
U 



210 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

required of them then, it requires of them now ; if they do not 
so read, I beg 3''ou will correct them. 

" I am, my dear general, most truly yours, 
(Signed) "R. E. Lee." 

The following, to a distinguislied Northern politician, is 
a very quiet but emphatic vindication of the course of the 
South : 

"Lexington, Va., January 5, 1866. 
" Jfr. OnATJNCEY BuEE. 

"My dear Sir: I am very much obliged to you for your 
letter of the 12th ult., and for the number of the Old Guard 
which you kindly sent me. I am glad to know that the intelli- 
gent and respectable people at the North are true and conserva- 
tive in their opinions ; for I believe by no other course can the 
right interest of the country be maintained. All that the South 
has ever desired was that the Union, as established by our fore- 
fathers, should be preserved; and that the Government, as ori- 
ginally organized, should be administered in purity and truth. 
If such is the desire of the North, there can be no contention 
between the two sections ; and all true patriots will unite in ad- 
vocating that policy which will soonest restore the country to 
tranquillity and order, and serve to perpetuate true republi- 
canism. 

" Please accept my thanks for your advocacy of right and 
liberty, and for the kind sentiments which you express toward 
myself; and believe me to be, with great respect, 

" Your obedient servant, 
(Signed) "R. E. Lee." 

The following, to his friend Hon. Reverdy Johnson, ex- 
presses very emphatically his views on the " test-oath," and 
other matters : 

• " Lexington, Va., January 2*7, 1866. 

" Hon. Rbverdy Johnson, Washington City, D. G. 

" My dear Sir : I am very much obliged to you for your 
kind letter of the 8th inst., and for the opportunity ajQforded, by 
the pamphlet which accompanied it, of reading your speech be- 
fore the Supreme Court, on the subject of the test-oath. I 



DEVOTION TO THE INTERESTS OF TUE SOUTH. 211 

should have expressed my thanks to you sooner ; but I have but 
recently returned from a visit to Richmond, w^here I was de- 
tained a week on business connected with Washington College. 
I have been looking anxiously for a decision of the question by 
the Supreme Court, and cannot but hope it will be favorable. 
You have so ably presented the arguments and reasons on the 
subject, that I trust they may prevail. I have hoped that Con- 
gress would have thought proper to have repealed the acts im- 
posing it, and all similar tests. To pursue a policy which will 
continue the prostration of one-half the country, alienate the af- 
fections of its inhabitants from the Government, and which must 
eventually result in injury to the country and the American 
people, appears to me so manifestly injudicious that I do not see 
how those responsible can tolerate it. I sincerely thank you for 
the repetition of your kind oflFer to aid me in any way in your 
power. I have been awaiting the action of President Johnson 
upon my application to be embraced in his proclamation of May 
29th, and for my restoration to civil rights, before attempting to 
close the estate of Mr. G. W. P. Custis, of which I am sole ad- 
ministrator. His servants were all liberated, agreeably to the 
terms of his will ; but I have been unable to place his grand- 
children in possession of the property bequeathed them. A por- 
tion of his landed property has been sold by the Government, in 
the belief, I presume, that it belonged to me ; whereas I owned 
no part of it, nor had any other charge than as administrator. His 
will, in his own handwriting, is on file in the court of Alexandria 
County. Arlington, and the tract on 'Four-Mile Run,' given 
him by General Washington, he left to his only child, Mrs. Lee, 
during her life, and, at her death, to his eldest grandson. Both 
of these tracts have been sold by Government. It has also sold 
Smith's Island (off Cape Charles), which Mr. Custis directed to 
be sold to aid in paying certain legacies to his granddaughters. 
If in your opinion there is any thing that can be done to enable 
me to bestow the property as bequeathed by the testator, and 
to close my administration of his estate, I would be greatly 
obliged to you to inform me. 

"I am, with great esteem, your obedient servant, 

(Signed) «R. E. Lee." 



312 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

The following, to the wife of President Davis, shows his 
indisposition to engage in controversy, and his keen sym- 
pathy for Mr. Davis in his imprisonment : 

"Lkxington, Ya., February 23, 1866. 
" Mrs. Jeffeeson Davis, Prospect Hill, Oa. 

" My dear Mbs. Davis : Your letter of the 12th inst. reached 
Lexington during my absence at Washington. I have never 
seen Mr. Colfax's speech, and am therefore ignorant of the 
statements it contained. Had it, however, come under my notice, 
I doubt whether I should have thought it proper to have replied. 
I have thought, from the time of the cessation of hostilities, 
that silence and patience on the part of the South was the true 
course, and I think so still. Controversy of all kinds will in my 
opinion only serve to continue excitement and passion, and will 
prevent the pubHc mind from the acknowledgment and accept- 
ance of the truth. These considerations have kept me from 
replying to accusations made against myself, and induced me to 
recommend the same to others. 

" As regards the treatment of the Andersonville prisoners, to 
which you allude, I know nothing, and could say nothing of my 
own knowledge. I never had any thing to do with any pris- 
oners, except to send those taken on the fields where I was en- 
gaged, to the provost-marshal-general at Richmond. 

" I have felt most keenly the sufferings and imprisonment of 
your husband ; and have earnestly consulted with friends as to 
any possible mode of affording him relief and consolation. He 
enjoys the sympathy and respect of all good men ; and, if, as 
you state, his trial is now near, the exhibition of the whole 
truth in his case will, I trust, prove his defense and justification. 
With sincere prayers for his health and speedy restoration to 
liberty, and earnest supplication to God that he may take you 
and yours under His guidance and protection. 

" I am, with great respect, your obedient servant, 

(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 

The following, to an old and long-tried friend, will serve 
to illustrate several points of his character : 



DEVOTION TO THE INTERESTS OF THE SOUTH. 213 

" Lexington, Va., March 1, 1866. 
'^^ Mr. E. J. Quirk, San Francisco^ Cal. 

" My dear Sir : I received with much pleasure your letter 
of the 20th of January, and am glad to learn that you are well 
and prosperous. A continuance of the manly exertion and rigid 
fidelity which you have hitherto practised will still further ad- 
vance you in life, and enable you to accomplish much good in 
the world. Time seems to have fallen hghtly on you, and your 
photograph represents you but little changed from the period 
when I first met you on the banks of the Mississippi. Yet the 
fact which you mention, of having a married daughter living in 
Nevada, shows the length of time which has elapsed. I hope 
future years will bring you equal happiness, and equal prosper- 
ity. In compliance with your request, I send a photograph of 
myself, taken during the war. I am sure that you will scarcely 
recognize a single trace of him whom you met at the quarries 
of St. Louis. 

" I am very much obliged to you for your bold defense of me 
in the New York papers, at a time when many were willing to 
believe any enormity charged against me. 

"This same slander which you at the time denounced as 
false, was nevertheless circulated at the North, and since the 
termination of hostilities has been renewed in Europe. Yet 
there is not a word of truth in it, or any ground for its origin. 
No servant, soldier, or citizen, that was ever employed by me, 
can with truth charge me with bad treatment. You must pre- 
sent my kind regards to your daughter. I am glad that you 
have her near you. I know she will be a great comfort to you. 

" With my best wishes for your health, happiness, and pros- 
perity, and many thanks for your kind remembrance of me, 
" I am, with much esteem, very truly yours, 
(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 

The following indicates his deep interest in the educa- 
tional interests of the country : 

"Lexington, Va,, March 20, 1866. 
'■^ Rev. G. W. Letbuen, Care of Rev. Br. Ramsey^ Lynchhirg, Va. 

" My dear Sir : I have received your letter of the 27th ult., 
in reference to our conversation upon the subject of the educa- 



214 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

tional interests of the country. So greatly have these interests 
been disturbed at the South, and so much does its future con- 
dition depend upon the rising generation, that I consider the 
proper education of its youth one of the most important objects 
now to be attained, and one from which the greatest benefits 
may be expected. Nothing will compensate us for the depres- 
sion of the standard of our moral and intellectual culture, and 
each State should take the most energetic measures to revive 
its schools and colleges, and, if possible, to increase the facili- 
ties of instruction, and to elevate the standard of learning. 

" The Legislature of Virginia, at its recent session, evinced 
its sense of the importance of education, by providing for the 
payment of the interest of its bonds held by the several institu- 
tions of learning, and by making the usual annual appropria- 
tions to the University of Virginia, and to the Virginia Military 
Institute, notwithstanding the extreme financial pressure under 
which the State is suffering. As regards Washington College, 
you are aware of the eflForts which its friends are making to in- 
crease its endowment, so as to expand its course of instruction. 
This is necessary, in my opinion, in order to keep pace with the 
advancement of science, and to provide for the present wants of 
the country. If it is accomplished it will be of the greatest ad- 
vantage, not only to the surrounding community, but to the 
State and to the South. There are at present representatives at 
the college from all the Southern States except Arkansas. 
" Very respectfully your obedient servant, 
(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 

The fotlowing, to one of liis favorite officers, expresses 
his feelings very freely on various points of interest : 

" Lexington, Va., March 15, 1866. 
" General J. A. Early, Care of J. Anderson, Esq., \ 
Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico. J 

" My dear GeiSTERAi. : I am very much obliged to you for the 
copies of my letters forwarded with yours of the 35th January. 
I hope you will be able to send me reports of the operations of 
your commands in the campaign from the Wilderness to Rich- 



DEVOTION TO THE INTERESTS OF THE SOUTH. 215 

mond, at Lynchburg, in the Valley, Maryland, etc. All statis- 
tics as regards numbers, destruction of private property by the 
Federal troops, etc., I should like to have, as I wish my mem- 
ory strengthened on those points. It will be difficult to get the 
world to understand the odds agamst which we fought ; and the 
destruction, or loss, of all returns of the army embarrasses me 
very much. I read your letter from Havana, in the New York 
N'ewSy with much interest, and was pleased with the temper in 
which it was written. I have since received the paper contain- 
ing it, published in the city of Mexico, and also your letter in 
reference to Mr. Davis. I understand and appreciate the mo- 
tives which prompted both letters, and think they will be of 
service in the way you intended. I have been much pained to 
see the attempts made to cast odium upon Mr. Davis, but do 
not think they will be successful with the reflecting or informed 
portion of the country. The accusations against myself I have 
not thought proper to notice, or even to correct misrepresenta- 
tions of my words and acts. We shall have to be patient, and 
suffer for a while at least ; and all controversy, I think, will only 
serve to prolong angry and bitter feelings, and postpone the 
period when reason and charity may resume their sway. At 
present the public mind is not prepared to receive the truth. 
The feelings which influenced you to leave the country were 
natural, and I presume were uppermost in the breasts of many. 
It was a matter which each one had to decide for himself, as he 
could only know the reasons which governed him. I was par- 
ticularly anxious on your account, as I had the same apprehen- 
sions to which you refer. I am truly glad that you are beyond 
the reach of annoyance, and hope you may be able to employ 
yourself profitably and usefully. Mexico is a beautiful country, 
fertile, of vast resources, and, with a stable government and a 
virtuous population, will rise to greatness. I do not think that 
your letters can be construed by your former associates as re- 
flecting upon them, and I have never heard the least blame cast, 
by those who have remained, upon those who thought it best to 
leave the country. I think I stated in a former letter the reasons 
which governed me, and will not, therefore, repeat them. I hope 
in time peace will be restored to the country, and that the 



216 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

South may enjoy some measure of prosperity. 1 fear, however, 
much suffering is still in store for her, and that her people must 
be prepared to exercise fortitude and forbearance. I must beg 
you to present my kind regards to the gentlemen with you ; and, 
with my best wishes for yourself, and undiminished esteem, 
" I am, most truly, yours, 
(Signed) " R. E. Lee.'* 



The following letter is worth preserving : 

" Lexington, Va., Api-il 6, 1866. 

" My dear Sir : I have received your letter of the 2d inst., 
and am obliged to you for your kind offer to reclaim some of the 
articles that have been taken from Arlington by the soldiers of 
the United States Army. I fear this would be a task of great 
trouble, and would not be attended by comparative good; but 
any articles that fall in your way, such as you describe, and which 
can be returned to me without inconvenience, I would be glad 
to get. As regards the advice you ask on the subject of emi- 
grating to Mexico or Brazil, I do not feel competent to give it. 
Each individual is the best judge of his own feelings, his own 
conduct, and his own wants, and can best determine such a ques- 
tion for himself. I made up my mind on the subject at the first 
cessation of hostilities. I considered that the South required the 
presence of her sons more then than at any former part of her 
history, to sustain and restore her; that though many might 
find comfortable homes in a foreign land, what would become of 
the Southern States, and the citizens who abided in them ? I 
have, therefore, invariably advised all who could remain to adhere 
to their home and friends ; and I have seen no reason to change 
my opinions. In answer to your question as to what position I 
hold in the order of Masons, I have to reply that I am not a 
Mason, and have never belonged to the society. With my best 
thanks for the kind sentiments you express toward me, and my 
sincere wishes for your future welfare, I am, very respectfully, 

" Your obedient servant, 
(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 



DEVOTION TO THE INTERESTS OF THE SOUTH 217 

The following is a specimen of many similar letters which 
he wrote : 

"Lexington, Ya., April 13, 1866. 
" Mr. . 

" My dear Sir : Your letter of the 5th inst., inclosing a slip 
from the Baltimore America?i, has been received. The same 
statement, with some variation, has been published at the North 
for several years. The statement is not true ; but I have nit 
thought proper to publish a contradiction, being unwilling to 
be drawn into a newspaper discussion, believing that those who 
know me would not credit it, and those who do not would 
care nothing about it. 

" I cannot now depart from the rule I have followed. It is 
so easy to make accusations against the people at the South 
upon similar testimony, that those so disposed, should one be 
refuted, will immediately create another ; and thus you would 
be led into endless controversy. I think it better to leave their 
correction to the return of reason and good feeling. 

" Thanking you for your interest in my behalf, and begging 
you to consider my letter as intended only for yourself, 
" I am, most respectfully, your obedient servant, 

(Signed) « R. E. Lee." 

The following was written to one of his oldest and most 
cherished friends : 

" Lexington, Va., Juli/ 9, 1866. 
" Captain James May, Hoeh Island, III. 

" My dear Sir : I was truly glad to receive your friendly 
letter, after so many years of silence and separation ; and I re- 
joice to read in it the expression of the same feeling of kindness 
and friendship that characterized our intercourse in early life. I 
assure you these feelings are cordially reciprocated by Mrs. Lee 
and myself, and we shall never forget the numerous kind acts 
extended to us by you during our sojourn in the West, 

" Your letter deserved and would have received an earlier 
answer ; but when it reached me I was engaged in the annual 
examination exercises at Washington College, which continued 
over three weeks, and since their termination I have been con- 
tinuously occupied in business relating to the institution. 



218 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" I must give you my special thanks for doing rae the justice 
to believe that my conduct during the last five eventful years 
has been governed by my sense of duty. I had no other guide, 
nor had I any other object than the defense of those principles 
of American liberty upon which the constitutions of the several 
States were originally founded; and, unless they are strictly 
observed, I fear there will be an end to Republican government 
in this country. I concur with you in opinion as to the propri- 
ety and duty of all persons uniting in the present posture of 
affairs for the restoration and reconciliation of the country. I 
have endeavored to pursue this course myself since the ces- 
sation of hostilities, and have recommended it to others. So 
far as my knowledge extends, there is no opposition at the South 
to the General Government. Every one approves of the policy 
of President Johnson, gives him his cordial support, and would, I 
believe, confer on him the presidency for another term, if it was 
in his power. I do not know what more you desire, and, even 
if I possessed the influence you attribute to me, how I could 
exercise it otherwise than as I have. But I have no influence, 
and do not feel at liberty to take a more active part in public 
affairs than I have done. 

" The whole attention of the people at the South is confined 
to their private business. They have no influence in the regu- 
lation of public affairs ; and, whatever is done, must be accom- 
plished by those who control the councils of the country. You 
and your friends at the North are the only persons who can 
exercise a beneficial influence. 

" I hope the long years which have passed since we met, 
have brought you nothing but prosperity and happiness, and 
that the future may give you tranquillity and peace. 

" I am, with great regard, your friend and servant, 
(Signed) "R. E. Lee." 

Tbe following is all that the most intense " loyalty " could 
ask: 

" Lexington, Va., August 16, 1866. 

" , Esq., New Orleans., La. 

" My dear Sir : Your letter of the 9th inst. has been re- 
ceived. If you intend to reside in this country, and wish to do 



i 



DEVOTION TO THE INTERESTS OF THE SOUTH. 219 

your part ia the restoration of your State and in the Govern- 
ment of the country, which I think it the duty of every citizen 
to do, I know of no objection to your taking the amnesty oath 
which I have seen. These considerations induced me to make 
applications to be included in the terms of the proclamation of 
President Johnson shortly after its promulgation. 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

" R. E. Lee." 

The following is an emphatic reiteration of his purpose 

not to suffer himself to be paraded before the public or led 

into controversy : 

"Lexington, Va., Augmt 22, 1866. 

" Mr. Herbert SAt7>T)ER8, Bouih Kin^Hton, London, Erujlfirul.. 

" Mt deae Me. Satjndees : I received to-day your letter of 
the 31st ult. What I stated to you in conversation, during the 
visit which you did me the honor to pay me in November last, 
was entirely for your own information and was in no way in- 
tended for publication ; my only object was to gratify the inter- 
est which you apparently evinced on the several topics which 
were introduced, and to point to facts which you might investi- 
gate, if you so desired, in your own way. I have an objection to 
the publication of my private conversations which are never in- 
tended but for those to whom they are addressed. I cannot, 
therefore, without an entire disregard of the rule which I have 
followed in other cases, and in violation of my own sense of 
propriety, assent to what you propose ; I hope, therefore, you will 
excuse me. Whatever you may think proper to publish, I hope 
will be the result of your own observations and convictions, and 
not on my authority. In the hasty perusal which I have been 
obliged to give the manuscript inclosed to me, I perceive many 
inaccuracies, resulting as much perhaps from my imperfect narra- 
tion as from misapprehension on your part. Though fully ap- 
preciating your kind wish to correct certain erroneous state- 
ments as regards myself, I prefer to remain silent rather than do 
any thing that might excite angry discussion at this time, when 
strong efforts are being made by conservative men, North and 
South, to sustain President Johnson in his policy, which I think 



220 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

offers the only means of healing the lamentable divisions of the 
country, which the result of the late convention at Philadelphia 
gives great promise of doing. 

" Thanking you for the opportunity afforded me of express- 
ing my opinion before executing your purpose, 

" I am, yours very truly, 

" R. E. Lee." 

The following is at the same time a graceful acknowl- 
edgment of courtesy and an emphatic avowal of principle : 

"Lexington, Va., September 27, 1866. 
" Mr. Charles W. Law, 6 Victoria Street, Westminster ) 
Alley, 8. TF., London, England. ) 

" My dear Sir : Allow me to thank you for your kind letter 
of the 17th ult., inclosing an article from the London Standard, 
The complimentary remarks of the letter I understand as re- 
ferring to the cause in which I was engaged, and not to myself. 
The good opinion of the English people as to the justice of that 
cause, constitutional government, is highly appreciated by the 
people of the South ; and my thanks are due to you for the 
sympathy and support jon gave it. 

" Most truly yours, 
(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., October 1, 1866. 

" Mrs. Mary E. , Washington City, B. 0. : 

" I have not found time till to-day to reply to your letter of 
the 2d ult. I regret that I cannot give you the information you 
ask in regard to the pictures at Arlington. I have understood 
that those remaining in the house have been moved from their 
former positions, and I do not, therefore, recognize them from 
your description. I cordially unite in your prayer that deeds 
of kindness and forbearance may be practised toward each other, 
by persons of all sections of the country, and that the ravages 
of war may be speedily obliterated. 

" Very respectfully your obedient servant, 
(Signed) "R. E. Lee." 



DEVOTION TO THE INTERESTS OF THE SOUTH. 221 

The following indorsement of his narrative of the cam- 
paign of 1864 will be appreciated by the many friends of the 
distinguished soldier to whom it is addressed : 

"Lexington, Va., October 15, 1866. 
" General J. A. Early, Toronto^ C. W. 

"My dear General: I am much obliged to you for the 
narrative forwarded with your letter of the 4th ult. I have read 
it with interest, and have tried to find the means of replying. 
Not being able do so, I shall wait no longer ; but will trust ta 
the mail, hoping it may reach you safely. Your account corre- 
sponds generally with my recollection, though I cannot pretend 
to express an opinion as to the accuracy of your statements, 
without giving the subject more investigation than I have now 
time to devote. I have no objection to the publication of the 
narrative of your operations before leaving the Army of Northern 
Virginia. I would recommend, however, that, while giving 
facts which you think necessary for your own vindication, you 
omit all epithets or remarks calculated to excite bitterness or 
animosity between different sections of the country. 

" With the most sincere wishes for your welfare, 
" I am very truly yours, 
(Signed) "R. E. Lee." 

The following will be read with deep interest, and will 
go down to history in vivid contrast with the political ambi- 
tion of many others : 

"Lexington, Va., February 4, 1867. 
" Hon. Egbert Ould, Virginia Senate, Richmond, Va. 

"My dear Sir: I received to-day your letter of the 31st ult., 
and the subject to which it relates is so important that, though 
confined to my room by indisposition, I reply at once. I feel 
greatly honored at what you say is the prevailing wish of lead- 
ing men in the State, that I should accept the nomination for 
the office of Governor of Virginia, and I duly appreciate the 
spirit that has led them to name me for that high position. I 
candidly confess, however, that my feelings induce me to prefer 
private life, which I think more suitable to my condition and 



222 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

age, and where I believe I can better advance the interests of my 
State than in that you propose. You will agree with me, I am 
sure, in the opinion that this is no time for the indulgence of 
personal or political considerations in selecting a person to fill 
that office ; nor should it be regarded as a means of rewarding 
individuals for supposed former services. The welfare of the 
State and the interests of her citizens should be the only prin- 
ciple of selection. Believing that there are many men in the 
State more capable than I am of filling the position, and who 
'could do more to promote the interests of the people, I most re- 
spectfully decline to be considered a candidate for the office. 

" I think it important, in selecting a Chief Magistrate of the 
Commonwealth, for the citizens to choose one capable of fulfill- 
ing its high trust, and at the same time not liable to the miscon- 
struction which their choice of one objectionable to the General 
Government would be sure to create, and thereby increase the 
evils under which the State at present labors. 

" I have no means of knowing, other than are apparent to you, 
whether my election as Governor of Virginia would be person- 
ally injurious to me or not, and therefore the consideration of 
that question in your letter has not been embraced in my reply. 
But 1 believe it would be used by the dominant party to excite 
hostility toward the State, and to injure the people in the eyes 
of the country ; and I therefore cannot consent to become the 
instrument of bringing distress upon those whose prosperity 
and happiness are so dear to me. If my disfranchisement and 
privation of civil rights would secure to the citizens of the State 
the enjoyment of civil liberty and equal rights under the Con- 
stitution, I would willingly accept them in their stead. 

" What T have written is intended only for your own infoj> 
mation. "With grateful thanks for your friendly sentiments, 
" I am very truly yours, 

"R. E. Lee." 

The following extract from a speech delivered in Atlanta, 
Ga., by Hon. B. H. Hill, may be appropriately introduced 
here : 

" When the f iitm-e historian comes to sm*vey the charac- 



DEVOTION TO THE INTERESTS OF THE SOUTH. 233 

ter of Lee, he will find it rising like a huge mountain above 
the undulating plain of humanity, and he will have to lift 
his eyes toward heaven to catch its summit. He possessed 
every virtue of the great commanders, without their vices. 
He was a foe without hate ; a friend without treachery ; a 
private citizen without wrong ; a neighbor without reproach ; 
a Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guilt. He 
was a Caesar without his ambition ; a Frederick without his 
tyranny ; a Napoleon without his selfishness ; and a Washing- 
ton without his reward. He was obedient to authority as a 
servant, and loyal in authority as a true king. He was gentle 
as a woman in life ; modest and pure as a virgin in thought ; 
watchful as a Roman vestal in duty ; submissive to law as 
Socrates, and grand in battle as Achilles. 

" There were many peculiarities in the habits and charac- 
ter of Lee which are but httle known, and may be studied 
with profit. He studiously avoided giving opinions upon 
subjects which it had not been his calling or training to in- 
vestigate ; and sometimes I thought he carried this great vir- 
tue too far. Neither the President, nor Congress, nor friends, 
could get his views upon any pubhc question not strictly 
military, and no man had as much quiet, unobtrusive con- 
tempt for what he called ' military statesmen and political 
generals.' Meeting him once on the streets of Richmond, I 
said to him, ' General, I wish you would give us your opinion 
as to the propriety of changing the seat of government and 
going farther south.' 

" ' That is a political question, Mr. Hill, and you politicians 
must determine it ; I shall endeavor to take care of the army, 
and you must make the laws and control the government.' 

" ' Ah, general,' I said, ' but you will have to change 
that rule, and form and express political opinions ; for, if we 
establish om* independence, the people will make you Mr. 
Davis's successor.' 

" ' Never, sir,' he replied with a firm dignity that be- 
longed only to Leo. ' That I will never permit. Whatever 



224 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

talents I may possess (and tliey are but limited) are military 
talents. My education and training are military. I think 
tlie military and civil talents are distinct, if not different, and 
full duty in either sphere is about as much as one man can 
qualify himself to perform. I shall not do the people the 
injustice to accept high civil office with whose questions it 
has not been my business to become familiar.' 

" ' Well, but general,' I insisted, ' history does not sus- 
tain your view. Ctesar, and Frederick of Prussia, and Bona- 
parte, were great statesmen, as well as great generals.' 

" ' And great tyrants,' he promptly responded. ' I speak 
of the proper rule in republics, where, I think, we should 
have neither military statesmen nor political generals.' 

" ' But Washington was both, and yet not a tyrant,' I re- 
peated. 

" And with a beautiful smile he said, ' Washington was 
an exception to all rule, and there was none like him.' 

" I could find no words to answer further, but instantly 
I said in thought " Surely Washington is no longer the only 
exception, for one like him, if not even greater, is here.' " 

" Lexington, Va., April 20, 1867. 
" Mr. Frank Fuller, 5V Broadway, New TorTc City, N. T. 

" My dear Sir : I hasten to return my thanks for your invi- 
tation to deliver a lecture before the Peabody Institute of New 
York and Brooklyn, and am much indebted to you for the mo- 
tives which prompted it. For reasons which I am sure you can 
appreciate, I have felt great reluctance to appear before the 
public in any manner, and do not think that I could accomplish 
any good by departing from this course. My opinions would 
have no influence in correcting the misunderstanding which has 
existed between the North and South, and which I fear is still 
destined to involve the country in greater calamities. Apart 
from these considerations, my present duties occupy all my time, 
and I am unable to neglect them without inconvenience to otliers. 
I am therefore obliged respectfully to decline your invitation. 
" With great respect, your obedient servant, 
(Signed) "R. E.Lee." 



DEVOTION TO THE INTERESTS OF THE SOUTH. 225 

The following, to a lady of liis acquaintance, will be read 
with interest : 

" Lexington, Va., May 21, 1867. 
^^Mrs. , Petersburg, Va. 

" My dear Mrs. : I regret that I have not been able to 

reply sooner to your kind letter ; but my duties are so constant 
and my correspondence so large, that I am unable to keep pace 
with their demands. I am very glad to hear from you, and hope 
that your family are all well. My thoughts often revert to the 
good people of your city, and I shall never cease to sympathize 
in every thing that concerns them. The present condition of af- 
fairs is, as you state, calculated to create much anxiety, but not 
sufficient, in my opinion, to cause us to despond, or to cease in 
our effort to direct events to a favorable issue. It is difficult to 
see now what course will lead certainly to that end, and I cannot 
pretend to advise, as you suggest, those better qualified to judge 
than myself. But I know that in pursuing the path dictated by 
prudence and wisdom, and in endeavoring honestly to accomplish 
what is right, the darkness which overshadows our political hori- 
zon will be dissipated, and the true course to pursue will, as we 
advance, become visible and clear. I think, however, it must 
now be apparent to every one who reflects, that all who are not 
disfranchised by the present laws should qualify themselves to 
vote at the approaching elections, and unite in selecting the best 
available men to represent them in the required convention. 
Whatever the convention may then adopt as the best under the 
circumstances for the people and State, irrespective of individuals, 
should then be accepted and carried out in good faith. Although 
their decision may not be considered at the time as the most ad- 
vantageous, it should be recollected that it can be improved as 
opportunity offers, and in the end I trust all things will work to- 
gether for our good. 

" Above all, I think there should be harmony and good feel- 
ing between all citizens, and no division into parties, but all 
should unite for the common good. For reasons which I think 
you will understand and appreciate, I have a great reluctance to 
appear before the public in any manner. I think no good Avould 
result from it, and I must, therefore, ask you to consider my let- 
15 



226 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

ter as private. Please present me most kindly to Mr. W 

and all the members of your household, and say to your kind 

neighbors, the M s, B , and B s, that I wish much to 

see them. 

" Very respectfully and truly yours, 

" R. E. Lee." 

The following, to one of the most gallant soldiers and de- 
voted patriots in the South, has been published in the news- 
papers, but is worth preserving : 

" Lexington, Va., May 23, 1867. 

" My dear General : I was very glad to hear, from your let- 
ter of last month, the prosperous condition of the Southern Hos- 
pital Association, and the relief that has already been aiforded 
to disabled and needy men. I trust that, as our political troubles 
are reconciled, and business becomes reestablished and extended 
in the South, the sufferings of all may be relieved. I feel as- 
sured that, under the present management of the association, 
all will be done that can be done, and those who are devoting 
their time and energies to this praiseworthy work will receive 
from posterity, as well as from the present generation, the thanks 
which are due. 

" As regards the course Virginia may take under the recent 
laws of Congress, to which you refer, it is difficult to see what 
may eventually be the best. I think, though, it is plain, in the 
execution of the laws, that a convention will be called, and a 
State constitution formed. The question, then, is, Shall the 
members of the convention be selected from the best available 
men in the State, or from the worst ? Shall the machinery of the 
State government be arranged and set in motion by the former 
or by the latter ? In this view of the case, I think it is the duty 
of all citizens not disfranchised to qualify themselves to vote, 
attend the polls, and elect the best men in their power. Judge 
Underwood, Messrs. Botts, Hunnicut, etc., would be well pleased, 
I presume, if the business were left to them and the negroes. 
But I do not think this course would be either for the interest of 
the State or country. When the convention assemble, it will 



DEVOTION TO THE INTERESTS OF THE SOUTH. 227 

be for them to determine what, under the circumstances of the 
case, it will be best for the people to do, and their decision 
should be submitted to by all, as the decision of the State. I 
look upon the Southern people as acting under compulsion, not 
of their free choice, and that it is their duty to consult the best 
interests of their States as far as may be in their power to do. 

" I hope that all our friends in New Orleans may do well, and 
that each may succeed in the business Avhich he has under- 
taken. Every man must now look closely to his own affairs, and 
depend upon his own good sense and judgment to push them on- 
ward. We have but little to do with general politics. We can- 
not control them, but, by united efforts, harmony, prudence, and 
wisdom, we may shape and regulate our domestic policy. 

" Please present my kindest regards to Generals Beauregard, 
Longstreet, Hood, Buckner, and all friends. 

" Wishing you every happiness, I am truly yours, 

(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 

" To General D. H. Maury." 

The following explains itself, and is most significant as 
showing that, while fully " accepting the situation," he could 
by no means approve of the course of Southern men who 
have united with the dominant party : 

"Lexington, Va., October 29, 1867. 
" General J. Longstbeet, 21 Oarondelet Street, New Orleans, La. 

" Mt dear General : When I received your letter of the 
8th of June, I had just returned from a short trip to Bedford 
County, and was preparing for a more extended visit to the 
White Sulphur Springs for the benefit of Mrs. Lee's health. As 
I could not write such a letter as you desired, and as you stated 
that you would leave New Orleans for Mexico in a week from 
the time you wrote, to be absent some months, I determined to 
delay my reply till my return. Although I have been here more 
than a month, I have been so occupied by necessary business, 
and so incommoded by the effects of an attack of sickness, from 
which I have not yet recovered, that this is the first day that I 
have been able to write to you. 



228 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" I have avoided all discussion of political questions since 
the cessation of hostilities, and have, in my own conduct, and in 
my recommendations to others, endeavored to conform to exist- 
ing circumstances. I consider this the part of wisdom as well 
as of duty ; but, while I think we should act under the law and 
according to the law imposed upon us, I cannot think the course 
pursued by the dominant political party the best for the inter- 
ests of the country, and therefore cannot say so, or give them 
my approval. This is the reason why I could not comply with 
the request in your letter. I am of the opinion that all who 
can, should vote for the most intelligent, honest, and conscien- 
tious men eligible to office, irrespective of former party opinions, 
who will endeavor to make the new constitutions and the laws 
passed under them as beneficial as possible to the true interests, 
prosperity, and liberty of all classes and conditions of the people. 

" With my best wishes for your health and happiness, and 
my kindest regards to Mrs. Longstreet and your children, I am 
with great regard, and very truly and sincerely yours, 

"R. E. Lee." 

' It may be added in this connection, that he was accus- 
tomed sometimes to express himself in terms of strongest 
condemnation of the injustice done the South by some of 
the ultra measures of Congress. In a word, he never ceased 
to be a Yirginian and a Southron. 

The following is in reply to one of many similar letters 
which he received : 

"Lexington, Va., January 20, 1868. 

" My deae Madam : I have just received your letter of the 
15th inst,, and am glad to learn of the interest felt by yourself 
and friends in the welfare of the South, and hope that your 
kind eflForts to relieve the suffering among its people may be 
successful. 

" I think you need feel no hesitation in calling upon any of 
the citizens of the cities which you propose to visit, for informa- 
tion or aid to enable you to administer relief to the distressed ; 
and I feel assured that your charitable errand will be commended 



DEVOTION TO THE INTERESTS OF THE SOUTH. 229 

by the benevolent, and that you will receive a cordial welcome 
from your former pupils and acquaintances. 

" Such great changes have occurred in the condition of South- 
ern families, that I am at a loss to designate those whose hospi- 
tality it might be agreeable to you to accept, or convenient to 
them to extend ; but, should you experience any embarrassment 
on your arrival in Richmond, you can safely go to any of the 
principal hotels, and I feel certain that Mr. Carrington, of the 
Exchange, or Mr. Ballard, of the Ballard House, would do every 
thing in his power to promote your comfort and convenience. 

" Among the gentlemen to whom you could apply for any 
information you might want, I can refer you to Messrs. James 
Lyons and Wm. H. MacFarland, and the Rev. Drs. Hoge and 
Minnegerode. Should you continue your journey to Wilming- 
ton and Charleston, as you intimate, Mr. George Davis, of the 
former city, and Mr. C. C. Meminger, of the latter, could give you 
useful information and assistance. 

" With my best wishes for your safe journey and successful 
mission, I am, very respectfully, 

" Your obedient servant, 

"R. E. Lbe." 

The following letter shows that he appreciated his legal 
rights, and purposed at a proper time to maintain them : 

" Lexington, Va., January 13, 1869. 
" Hon. J. S. Black, Washington City, D. G. 

" Mt dear Sie : I received this morning a letter from my 
friend Captain James May, informing me of the kind interest 
you expressed in my welfare, and of the generous offer of your 
professional services for the restoration of the property belong- 
ing to the estate of Mr. G. W. P. Custis, which was sold by the 
Government during the late war. 

" I am deeply sensible of your kindness, and return my 
grateful thanks to you for your offer of assistance, which at the 
proper time I hope it may be convenient for you to give. You 
have been made aware by the papers in Captain May's posses- 
sion, that I am not directly interested in this property, except 
as the executor of Mr. Custis. It will never be of any value to 



230 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

me, but I desire to turn it over to the rightful heir. I have not 
as yet taken any steps in the matter, under the belief that I 
could accomplish no good, nor do I wish now to do so, unless in 
your opinion some benefit would result from it. 

" Mr. Francis L. Smith, of Alexandria, my friend and coun- 
sel before the war, is acquainted with all the circumstances of 
Mr. Custis's estate, and will be happy to give you any informa- 
tion you may at any time desire, or to procure you any evidence 
you may require. 

" I hope some day that I may have the pleasure of meeting 
you again, and of renewing the friendly intercourse that for- 
merly existed, and of thanking you in person for your kindness 
and consideration. 

" With great respect, I am your obedient servant, 

"R. E. Lee." 

The following, written soon after the action of Con- 
gress, preventing the execution of an order to restore the 
Arlington relics, fully explains itself : 

"Lexington, Va., March 29, 1869. 
" Eon. Thomas Laweenoe Jones, Washington City, D. G. 

" My dear Sib : I beg to be allowed to tender you my sin- 
cere thanks for your efforts to have restored to Mrs. Lee certain 
family relics in the Patent-Office in Washington. The facts re- 
lated in your speech in the House of Representatives on the 
3d inst., so far as known to me, are correct ; and, had I conceived 
the view taken of the matter by Congress, I would have endeav- 
ored to have dissuaded Mrs. Lee from applying for them. It 
may be a question with some whether the retention of these 
articles is more " an insult," in the language of the Committee 
on Public Buildings, " to the loyal people of the United States," 
than their restoration ; but of this I am willing that they should 
be the judge ; and, since Congress has decided to keep them, 
she must submit. 

" Her thanks to you, sir, however, are not the less fervent 
for your kind intercession in her behalf ; and, with highest re- 
gards, I am, with great respect, 

" Your obedient servant, R. E. Leb." 



DEVOTION TO THE INTERESTS OF THE SOUTH. 231 

The following is one of many similar letters which, al- 
though never published, exerted a most potent influence upon 
public sentiment in Yirginia and the South : 

" Lexington, Va., June 11, 1869. 

" Major . 

" My dear Sir : Your letter has been received. I have great 
reluctance to speak on political subjects, because I am entirely 
withdrawn from their consideration, and therefore mistrust my 
own judgment. I have, however, said, in conversation with 
friends, that, if I was entitled to vote, I should vote for the ex- 
cision of the obnoxious clauses of the proposed constitution, and 
for the election of the most conservative eligible candidates for 
Congress and the Legislature. I believe this course offers the 
best prospect for the solution of the diflSculties in which the 
State is involved, accessible to us. I think all who can should 
register and vote. Very truly yours, R. E. Lee." 

The following shows his deep interest in all that concerns 
the material prosperity of the South : 

" Lexington, Va., September 14, 1869. 
" Colonel Blanton Duncan, CTiairman Committee ) 
of Arrangements, Louisville, Ky. ) 

" Dear Sib : I have had the honor to receive your invitation 
to attend as an honorary member of the Commercial Convention, 
to assemble at Louisville on the 12th of October next. The 
important measures proposed to be considered by the conven- 
tion will attract the earnest attention of the whole country, and, 
I feel assured, will receive the calm deliberation which so mo- 
mentous a subject as the advancement of the interests of all the 
States, the development of the wealth and resources of each, re- 
quires from American citizens. If we turn to the first history of 
the country and compare our material condition with that of 
our forefathers, when they bravely undertook, in the face of the 
difficulties which surrounded them, its organization and estab- 
lishment, it would seem to be an easy task for us to revive what 
may be depressed, and to encourage what may be languishing 
in all the walks of life. We shall find it easy, if we cherish 



232 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

the same principles and practise the same virtues which governed 
them. Every man must, however, do his part in this great 
work. He must carry into the administration of his affairs in- 
dustry, fidelity, and economy, and apply the knowledge taught 
by science to the promotion of agriculture, manufactures, and all 
industrial pursuits. As individuals prosper, communities will 
become rich, and the avenues and depots, required by trade and 
commerce, will be readily constructed. In my particular sphere 
I have to attend to my proper business, which occupies so much 
of my attention that I have but little time to devote to other 
things. I am unable, therefore, to accept your kind invitation, 
but I am happy in the belief that the enlightened delegates that 
will be present at the convention will do all that can be done 
for the good of the country. Thanking you for the kind manner 
in which your invitation has been extended, I am, with great 
respect, your obedient servant, R. E. Lee." 

The following sbows how widely his opinions were 
souglit, and how far his influence extended : 

" Lexington, Va., January 6, 18Y0. 
"DxTiirLAP Scott, Esq^.^ Georgia Legislature, Macon, Oa. 

" Deae Sir : Your letter of the 3d has been received. I am 
very sorry for the new difficulties in which Georgia is involved, 
but hope that the united wisdom and prudence of her Legislature 
may decide upon a course that will relieve her. What that 
course shall be I cannot pretend to say. The members of the 
Legislature can alone decide. The responsibility rests solely 
upon them, and they have at heart the true interests of the State 
with that of all her people. If you will act in accordance with 
the dictates of your conscience, to the best of your judgment, 
and for the whole interests of your State, in her present emer- 
gency, unbiased by selfish or party considerations, you will do 
right. Thanking you for your kind expressions of regard and 
esteem, I am very truly yours, R. E. Lee." 

Additional interest is added to the following letter by 
the death of the distinguished gentleman to whom it is ad- 



DEVOTION TO THE INTERESTS OF THE SOUTH. 233 

dressed, and by the fact that it is among tlie last letters of 
this character which General Lee ever wrote : 

" Lexington, Va., March 3, 1810. 
" Mon. James M. Mason, Alexandria, Va. 

" My dear Sir : I thank you for your letter of the 25th ult., 
and still more for the kind feelings which prompted it. I rarely 
read newspaper articles about myself, and feel more humbled 
by the praise of my friends (knowing how little I merit it) than 
the censure of my enemies. The one seems to me to be as dis- 
tant from the truth as the other. I desired to write to you 
upon your return to Virginia to express my pleasure at the 
event, and, but that I hoped to have soon seen you, should have 
done so. I have been so much indisposed this winter that I 
have not been able to go anywhere, and my regular avocations 
employed all the time I could devote to them. I hope, should 
you visit the mountains this summer, that you wiU come to 
Lexington to see us. I do not know that I will leave here, but 
whenever I go to Alexandria I shall take great pleasure in see- 
ing you. 

" I desired to attend Mr. Peabody's funeral, simply to show 
my respect for a man whom Americans might justly honor, and, 
had I felt» able to undertake the journey at that inclement 
season, I should have gone for that single purpose. When I 
saw the protracted parade and lingering ceremony which was 
practised on the occasion, so opposed to my feelings of sorrow 
and resignation, I regretted less my inability to attend. Please 
present my kindest regards to Mrs. Mason, your daughters and 
family, in which Mrs. Lee and my family cordially unite. 

"With my best wishes for your health and happiness, 
I am most truly yours, R. E. Lee." 

So careful was General Lee to observe scrupulously the 
terms of his parole, and to avoid even the appearance of po- 
litical entanglements of every kind, that he refused to attend 
all public meetings which had any bearing upon the war or 
the political status of the country. 

At the Yirginia Springs, in 1869, a meeting was called to 



234 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, 

aid the scheme of Rev. Dr. "W. F. Broaddus for the educa- 
tion of the orphans of Yirginia soldiers. General Lee sym- 
pathized most heartily with this enterprise, and with the 
judicious manner in which it was conducted ; he had frequent 
conferences and correspondence with Dr. Broaddus concern- 
ing it, and was accustomed every year to make most liberal 
contributions to the object. Yet he refused to attend this 
meeting — assigning as a reason that he desired to avoid all 
public gatherings that had any thing to do with the war. 
Upon the same principle he refused to attend the " Gettys- 
burg Identification " meeting, and wrote a letter in which he 
said: "I think it wisest not to keep open the sokes of 

WAK, BUT to follow THE EXAMPLE OF THOSE NATIONS WHO 
endeavored TO OBLITERATE THE MARKS OF CIVIL STRIFE, AND 
TO COMMIT TO OBLIVION THE FEELINGS IT ENGENDERED." 

King William of Prussia has been justly eulogized for for- 
bidding the celebration of the anniversary of Sadowa, " that 
he might not wound the feelings of any German people." 
But nobler still is the conduct of this great leader of a " Lost 
Cause," who would suppress natural resentment against suc- 
cessful wrong, forget the afilictions of the people he loved 
so well, and, instead of cherishing hatred against the enemies 
who had triumphed over the liberties of his country, would 
seek to heal " the sores of war," and " to commit to oblivion 
the feelings it engendered." 

And yet this noble man died " a prisoner of war on pa- 
role" — his application for "amnesty" was never granted, 
or even noticed — and the commonest privileges of citizen- 
ship which are accorded to the most ignorant negro were de- 
nied to this king of men. 



CHAPTEE YII. 



HIS SOCIAL CHAKACTEE. 



General Lee had a quiet dignity which forbade all uii- 
due familiarity, and those who only saw him amid the press- 
ing cares of the war might call him " reserved ; " but in the 
social circle there was about him a charming affability and 
courtesy which won the hearts of all who had the privilege 
of meeting him thus. 

It is related that, during one of his great marches, a plain 
old farmer started out from home with the full purpose of 
seeing General Lee. Riding up to a bivouac-fire around 
which some officers were gathered, he was so courteously re- 
ceived by a plainly-dressed " colonel " that he forgot his 
special mission and accepted an invitation to join the group. 
Presently he turned to his polite " colonel," and, expressing 
his great desire to see General Lee, was very much astonished 
at the quiet reply, " I am General Lee, and I am most 
happy to have met you." 

Even amid his pressing duties at the college he found 
time to be the most thoroughly polite gentleman in the com- 
munity. He seemed to think himself called on to visit all 
strangers who came to Lexington, and frequently surprised 
and delighted them by his unexpected courtesy. How often 
have I seen him in the stores and shops of the town, chatting 
pleasantly with every comer, or walking a mile through mud 
or snow to call on some humble family, who will hand it 



236 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

down as an event in their history that they had a visit from 
General Lee ! 

His house was the abode of real " old Virginia hospi- 
tality," and many visitors to Lexington will now recall with 
sad pleasm-e the grace and dignity with which they were 
welcomed to that model home. 

Quiet and unobtrusive, a good listener, and always ready 
to allow others to lead the conversation, G-eneral Lee was 
yet possessed of very fine conversational powers, and showed 
the greatest tact in adapting himself to the tastes of his 
guests and making them feel at home. A plain farmer upon 
whose lands our troops were once camped told the writer 
that he had less difficulty in gaining access to General Lee, 
was treated by him with far more courtesy and felt more at 
home in his tent, than with certain quartermasters with 
whom he came in contact. 

In the spring of 1869 an old gentleman, who was so deaf 
that it was exceedingly difficult to converse with him, called 
one evening at General Lee's house. The room was full of 
company, but the general took his seat beside his deaf visitor, 
talked to him with apparent ease, chose such topics as he 
was familiar with, and conducted the conversation with such 
tact that the old gentleman went away charmed with his 
visit. 

General Lee rarely forgot a face or a name. I have seen 
him frequently recognize at once some old soldier whom he 
had barely met during the war, and who would be as sur- 
prised as delighted that his loved commander had not for- 
gotten him. He knew by name nearly all of the ladies and 
children of Lexington and the vicinity, and seemed worried 
if he ever met one whom he failed to recognize. I remem- 
ber seeing him once at a public gathering, very much annoyed 
at not knowing a young lady present, until he learned by 
diligent inquiry that she was a stranger who had just reached 
town that evening. The only occasion upon which I ever 
knew him to fail to recognize an old acquaintance was under 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 237 

the following circumstances : Seeing the general one morning 
coming down to the chapel with a gentleman who was evi- 
dently an Episcopal clergyman, I pui-posely threw myself in 
the way in order that I might be introduced, and thus have 
opportunity to ask him to officiate in my place at the chapel 
service. Noticing that in the introduction the general called 
my own name, but did not call that of the visitor, I said : 
" Excuse me, general, but I did not hear the name." "With 
the inimitable grace peculiar to him, he replied : " It is tune 
for us to go in to the service." As I came down from the 
pulpit the general (whose seat, by-the-way, was always near 
the front) met me and said : " I am ashamed to say, sir, that 
I do not know the name of that gentleman. And I am so 
«ure that I ought to know him that I should be sorry for 
him to find out that I do not recognize him. I wish that 
you would ascertain his name." I immediately approached 
the gentleman, told him that I did not hear his name when 
introduced, and thus got him to give it. The general, who 
had followed within ear-shot, at once stepped up and began 
to introduce the gentleman to all around. The next day he 
said to me : " I. was really very much ashamed at not know- 
ing that gentleman yesterday ; I ought to have recognized 
him at once. He spent at least an hour in my quarters in 
the city of Mexico just after its occupation by the American 
army, and, although I have never seen him since (and had 
never seen him before), he made a very agreeable impression 
upon me, and I ought not to have forgotten him." 

I never saw General Lee's courtesy desert him for a mo- 
ment, even amid the most trying circumstances. 

His uniform courtesy and kindness were sometimes abused 
by thoughtless visitors who obtruded upon him at unseason- 
able hours, and still more ffy letters which flooded his mails, 
and to which he was very careful to reply. "While at "Washing- 
ton College he received bushels of letters from all sorts of 
people on all sorts of subjects, and would worry himself to 
reply to them, when most men would have passed them by 



238 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

in silence. He one day showed the writer a letter from a 
distressed damsel in St. Louis, who said that her lover had 
been a soldier, " either in Mr. Lee's or Mr. Johnston's army " 
— that she had not heard from him since the close of the war, 
and that his family reported him dead, but she believed that 
this was only a trict on their part, to prevent him from mar- 
rying her. She wrote to beg that " Mr. Lee " would write 
her if he knew any thing of him, and, if he did not, that he 
would write for her to " Mr. Johnston," to see if he could 
give her any information. General Lee made the most diligent 
inquiries after the man in question, saying that he " would be 
very glad to relieve the poor woman if he could," and, after 
all of his inquiries proved futile, he wrote her a kind letter 
of sympathy. 

He received many letters from Federal officers, newspaper 
men, etc., and the mingled courtesy, tact, and quiet humor 
with which he would reply, would form a most interesting 
chapter if it were proper to publish the letters in full. 

I cannot, however, refrain from giving the following ver- 
hatim copy of a reply to a distinguished Federal general, who 
wrote to propound to him certain questions which are plainly 
indicated in General Lee's answer : 

" Lexington, Va., Jatmary 18, 1869. 

" Dear Sik : A reply to your letter of the 4th inst. would re- 
quire more time than I can devote to it, and lead to a discussion 
of military aflfairs from which, for reasons that will occur to you, 
I hope that you will excuse me. 

" I will, therefore, only say that the failure of the Confederate 
array at Gettysburg was owing to a combination of circumstances, 
but for which success might have been reasonably expected. 

" It is presumed that General Burnside had good reasons for 
his move from Warrenton to Fredericksburg ; and, as far as I 
am able to judge, the earlier arrival of his pontoons at Aquia 
Creek would not have materially changed the result. Their ap- 
pearance would only have produced an earlier concentration of 
the Confederate army at Fredericksburg. As regards General 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 239 

McClellan, I have always entertained a high opinion of his ca- 
pacity, and have no reason to think that he omitted to do any 
thing that was in his power. 

" It is difficult for me to say what success would have at- 
tended the execution of your plan of moving the Federal army 
to Aquia Creek, after its attack on Fredericksburg, and of 
threatening Richmond from Fortress Monroe with the available 
troops in that quarter, and then entering the Rappahannock 
with the main army. 

" I do not think that the Confederate army would have re- 
treated to Richmond until the movement developed the necessity. 

" After the accomplishment of an event it is so easy, with the 
aid of our after-knowledge, to correct errors that arise from 
previous want of information, that it is diflScult to determine the 
weight that should be given to conclusions thus reached. 

" Thanking you for your expressions of kindness, and regret- 
ting my inability to comply more fully with your wishes, 
" I am, very truly, your obedient servant, 

" R. E. Lee." 

The above letter was never puhlished ; but it is hoped 
that the distinguished gentleman to whom it was addi'essed 
will pardon its introduction here, as I have carefully sup- 
pressed his name. Upon another occasion General Lee re- 
ceived a letter from some spirit-rappers, asking his opinion 
on a certain great military movement. He wrote in reply a 
most courteous letter, in which he said that the question was 
one about which military critics would differ ; that his own 
judgment about such matters was but poor at best, and that 
inasmuch as they had power to consult (through their medi- 
ums) Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, Wellington, and all of the 
other great captains who have ever lived, he could not 
think of obtruding his opinion into such company. He as- 
tonished the writer one day, a few weeks before his death, by 
showing him a letter from one of the editors of a New York 
paper, inquiring what battle it was in which General Lee 
asked of General McClellan a truce to bury his dead — and 



240 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

asking me if I remembered. Upon replying that it was my 
very decided conviction that, in all of his contests with Gen- 
eral McClellan, the flag of truce had to come from the other 
side I that Sharpsburg was the only battle at which it could 
have occurred, and that there was no formal truce there, 
though a tacit understanding on a part of the line, by which 
both parties gathered up their dead and wounded — ^he quiet- 
ly replied : " Yes ! that is my impression. I remember dis- 
tinctly that at Sharpsburg we held a large part of the battle- 
field, that we remained in line of battle the whole of the 
next day, expecting — and in fact hoping for — an attack, and 
that we only withdrew upon information that the enemy was 
being largely reenforced. But this gentleman writes to me 
(I wish he had written to General McClellan, he could have 
told him), and I desired before answering him to confirm my 
impression by that of others." 

Not long after the close of the war General Lee received 
a letter from General David Hunter, of the Federal araiy, 
in which he begged information upon two points : 

1. His (Hunter's) campaign in the summer of 1864 was 
undertaken on information received at the War Department 
in "Washington that General Lee was about to detach forty 
thousand picked troops to send to General Johnston. Did 
not his (Hunter's) movements prevent *this, and relieve Sher- 
man to that extent ? 

2. When he found it necessary to retreat from before 
Lynchburg, did he not adopt the most feasible line of retreat ? 

General Lee wrote a very courteous reply, in which he 
said : " The information upon which your campaign was 
undertaken was erroneous. I had no troops to spare Gen- 
eral Johnston, and no intention of sending him any — cer- 
tavnly not forty thousand^ as that would have taken about 
all I had. 

" As to the second point, I would say that I am not ad- 
vised as to the motives which induced you to adopt the line 
of retreat which you took, and am not, perhaps, competent 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 241 

» 

to judge of tlie question ; l)ut I certainly exjpected you to re- 
treat hy way of the Shenandoah Valley, and was gratified at 
the time that you preferred the route through the mountains 
to the Ohio — leaving the valley open for General Early's ad- 
vance into Maryland." 

There was a quiet humor, and upon occasion a keen wit, 
in General Lee, which was only appreciated by those who 
came into intimate contact with him. Hon. B. H. Hill, in 
the speech from which an extract in the previous chapter is 
taken, gives the following : 

" Lee sometimes indulged in satire, to which his greatness 
gave point and power. He was especially severe on news- 
paper criticisms of military movements — subjects about 
which the winters knew nothing. 

" ' "We made a great mistake, Mr. Hill, in the begftining 
of our struggle, and I fear, in spite of all we can do, it will 
prove to be a fatal mistake,' he said to me, after General 
Bragg ceased to command the Army of Tennessee, an event 
Lee deplored. 

" ' What mistake is that, general ? ' 

" ' Why, sir, in the beginning we appointed all our worst 
generals to command the armies, and all our best generals to 
edit the newspapers. As you know, I have planned some 
campaigns and quite a number of battles. I have given the 
work all the care and thought I could, and sometimes, when 
my plans were completed, as far as I could see, they seemed 
to be perfect. But when I have fought them through, I 
have discovered defects and occasionally wondered I did not 
see some of the defects in advance. When it was all over, 
I found by reading a newspaper that these best editor gen- 
erals saw all the defects plainly from the start. Unfor- 
tunately, they did not communicate their knowledge to me 
until it was too late.' Then, after a pause, he added, with a 
beautiful, grave expression I can never forget : ' I have no 
ambition but to serve the Confederacy, and do all I can to 
win our independence. I am willing to serve in any capacity 
16 



243 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

to whicli the authorities may assign me. I have done the hest 
I could in the field, and have not succeeded as I could wish. 
I am willing to yield my place to these best generals, and I 
will do my best for the cause editing a newspaper.' " 

In the same strain he once remarked to one of his gen- 
erals : " Even as poor a soldier as I am can generally dis- 
cover mistakes after it is all over. But if I could only in- 
duce these wise gentlemen who see them so clearly before- 
hand to communicate with me in advance, instead of wait- 
ing until the evil has come upon us, to let me know that 
tJiey hnew all the time, it would be far better for my reputa- 
tion, and (what is of more consequence) far better for the 
cause." 

He had a quiet humor in administering his rebukes 
which made them very keenly felt by those who were so un- 
fortunate as to incur in any way his disapprobation. 

The following incidents may serve as specimens of many 
more that might be given : 

After the battle of Malvern Hill had ceased, and Mc- 
Clellan had left the ground of his gallant defense for Harri- 
son's Landing, one of the Confederate commanders, who had 
not been fortunate in his management of the attack, and was 
not aware that McClellan had retreated, galloped up to Gen- 
eral Lee and exclaimed with considerable vehemence : " If 
you will permit me, sir, I will charge that hill with my 
whole force and carry it at the point of the bayonet." " No 
doubt you could now succeed," was the quiet reply, " but I 
have one serious objection to your making the attack at this 
time." "May I ask what that objection is?" was the eager 
question of the ardent soldier, who saw honor and glory be- 
fore him in the present opportunity. " I am afraid, sir," re- 
joined the commander-in-chief, with a mischievous twinkle 
of the eye which all around enjoyed greatly, " that you would 

hurt my little friend. Captain . The enemy left about an 

hour ago, and he is over there with a reconnoitring party." 

"While at winter quarters at Petersburg, a party of offi- 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 243 

cers were one niglit busily engaged in discussing, at the 
same time, a mathematical problem and the contents of a 
stone jug which was garnished bj two tin cups. In the midst 
of this General Lee came in to make some inquiry. He got 
the information he wanted, gave a solution of the problem, 
and went out, the officers expressing to each other the hope 
that the general had not noticed the jug and cups. The 
next day one of the officers, in the presence of the others, 
was relating to General Lee a very strange dream he had the 
night before. The general listened with apparent interest 
to the narrative, and quietly rejoined : " That is' not at all 
remarkable. When young gentlemen discuss at midnight 
mathematical problems, the unknown quantities of which are 
a stone jug and two tin cups, they may expect to have 
strange dreams." 

One day, at Petersburg, General Lee, who never suffered 
a day to pass without visiting some part of his lines, rode by 
the quarters of one of his major-generals, and requested him 
to ride with him. As they were going he asked General 

■ if a certain work which he had ordered to be pushed 

was completed. He replied with some hesitation that it was, 
and General Lee then proposed that they should go and see 
it. Arriving at the spot it was found that little or no prog- 
ress had been made since they were there a week before, and 

General^ was profuse in his apologies, saying that he 

had not seen the work since they were there together, but 
that he had ordered it to be completed at once, and that 

Major had informed him that it had been already finished. 

General Lee said nothing then, except to remark, quietly, 
" We must give our personal attention to the lines." But, rid- 
ing on a little farther, he began to compliment General 

on the splendid charger he rode. " Yes, sir," said General 

, "he is a splendid animal, and I prize him the more 

highly because he belongs to my wife, and is her favorite 
riding-horse." " A magnificent horse," rejoined General Lee, 
" but I should not think him safe for Mrs. to ride. He 



344 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

is entirely too spirited for a lady, and I would urge you by 
all means to take some of the mettle out of liim before you 
suffer Mrs. to ride bim again. • And, by-the-way, gen- 
eral, I would suggest to you that these rough paths along 
these trenches would he very admirable ground over which to 
tamie him^ The face of the gallant soldier turned crimson ; 
he felt most keenly the rebuke, and never afterward report- 
ed the condition of his lines upon information received from 

Major , or any one else. His spirited charger felt the 

effect of this hint from headquarters. 

Orie of the professors in the college was one day mak- 
ing a very earnest speech at a meeting of the Faculty on 
the best means of securing a full attendance of the students 
at the chapel service. It so happened that this excellent 
gentleman (as well as some other members of the Faculty) 
was not in the habit of attending chapel himself. When he 
had finished his speech. President Lee quietly said : " One of 
the best ways that I know of to induce the students to attend 
chapel is to be sure that we attend ourselves." And accord- 
ingly his seat was never vacant, unless he was kept away by 
absence from home or sickness. 

The general used to enjoy very much a quiet joke at 
the expense of some over-confident student. The writer 
heard him, one day, introduce a new student to one of the 
professors by saying, with a quiet smile : " This young 
gentleman is going to graduate in one session." " l^o, gen- 
eral," replied the youth, "you misunderstood me; I did not 
say that I would graduate in one, but in two sessions," " Ah, 
he has concluded to postpone it for si session. Well, sir, I 
wish you the full realization of your hopes ; but I must tell 
you that you will have no time to play base-ball." 

It may be as well to introduce at this point a number of 
his private letters, which, written without any expectation 
that they would ever be published, will be read with deep 
interest as illustrating not only his social character, but other 
points as well. 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 345 

" Lexington, Va., October 25, 1865. 
*' Messrs. Soeanton & Burr, Hartford, Conn. 

" Gentlemezst : I have received your letter of the 13th inst., 
and fear I was not sufficiently explicit in my former communica- 
tion. I cannot now undertake the work you propose, nor can I 
enter into an engagement to do what I may never be able to 
accomplish. I have not read the histories of the late war to 
which you refer, but think it natural they should be of the 
character you describe. It will be some time before the truth 
can be known, and I do not think that period has yet arrived. 
I am unwilling that you should unnecessarily undertake a weari- 
some journey ; but if, after what I have said, you should still 
desire an interview with me, it will give me pleasure to see you 
at this place. 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, R. E. Lee." 

"Washington College, Lexington, Va., March 22, 1866. 
" "Waerek Fewcomb, Esq., New Yorh City, N. T. 

" Sir : The pleasing duty of transmitting to you the accom- 
panying copy of the proceedings of the Trustees of Washington 
College, at their meeting on the 10th inst., has been conferred 
upon me by the Board. 

" In presenting to you their grateful thanks for your gener- 
ous aid in behalf of the college, I beg leave to express my sense 
of your liberality to the cause of education, now so essential to 
the prosperity of the South. The reestablishment of her col- 
leges upon a broad and enlightened basis, calculated to provide 
for the proper instruction of her people, and to develop her dor- 
mant resources, is one of the greatest benefits that can be con- 
ferred upon the country. 

" Those contributing to this great result will be ranked by 
posterity among the most meritorious citizens. 

" With sentiments of great esteem, I am your obed't serv't, 
(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., 3farch 26, 1866. 
" Jfr. Eathmeli, "Wixson, 919 Clinton Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 

"Sir: I have delayed replying to your letter of the 12th 
inst. until I could inform you of the arrival of the books which 



246 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

you liave so generously bestowed upon Washington College. 
The six (6) boxes described in your letter arrived in safety and 
good order on Saturday last, and to-day the books have been 
properly arranged in a part of the library appropriated to them, 
where shelves are reserved for the other volumes which you 
mention. They will be preserved with care, and be designated 
as 'The Wilson Contribution to the Library of Washington 
College.' 

" They form the most valuable collection in the library, will 
do much for the advancement of science, give an impulse to the 
spread and develojDment of that knowledge so highly valued by 
your esteemed brother, and cause his memory to be revered and 
cherished by the wise and good. 

" I am, with great respect, your obedient servant, 

(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Ya., March 2*7, 1866. 
" Mr. — — , Louisville, Ky. 

" Mt dear Sir : In reply to your communication of the 19th 
inst., stating j'our kind intentions in behalf of the Literary So- 
cieties of Washington College, I have the honor to transmit a 
letter of thanks from each society. There is scarcely a feature 
in the organization of the college more improving or beneficial 
to the students than the exercises and influence of the societies ; 
and the good they accomplish renders them worthy of encourage- 
ment by the friends of education. 

"I therefore present to you, and to those who are united 
with you, my cordial thanks for the aid you propose. 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

(Signed) " R. E. Lke." 

" Lexington, Va., Aj/ril 5, 1866. 
" Mr. WiLiiAM H. Hope, City of New York. 

" My dear Sir : I am greatly obliged to you for your kind 
letter of the 22d ult., and for the interest you express for the 
fate of Arlington. I should like to recover it, that I might, as 
the executor of Mr. G. W. P. Custis, carry out the provisions of 
his will. I did not know that it had been sold for taxes on the 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 247 

lltli of January, 1864, as stated in the newspaper slip you in- 
closed. It was seized by the United States troops in the spring 
of 1861 while in possession of a regularly-appointed manager, 
who was conducting the usual agricultural operations. I should 
have thought that the use of the grounds, the large amount of 
wood on the place, the teams, etc., and the sale of the furniture 
of the house, would have been sufficient to have paid the taxes. 
I do not know whether the Secretary of War would relinquish 
possession of the estate, or permit its redemption under the 
Virginia laws. If he did, and should require the $26,860, stated 
to have been bid for it by the United States, to be refunded, it 
would be out of my power to redeem it. With my sincere 
thanks for your friendly letter, 

" I am, very truly, your obedient servant, 
(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., April 6, 1866. 
" Alfred H. Gtjeenset, Care of Harper & Brothers, ) 
FranTclin Square, New TorK ) 

" Sir : I have received your letter of the 22d ult., requesting 
the numbers of the Confederate army in the battles around 
Richmond, in 1862. I have not access to the returns of the 
army at that time, or I would comply with your request. 
" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 
(Signed) "R. E.Lee." 

"RoCEBRiDGE Baths, Ya., August 4, 1866. 
" Ohas. F. Deems, D. D., Editor Watchman, New Torh City. 

" My dear Sir : I am very much obliged to you for your kind 
letter of the 27th ult., and beg to return you my thanks for the 
friendly sentiments it contained. I have derived much satis- 
faction from the numbers of the Watchman you have kindly 
sent me, but it will be out of my power to contribute any thing 
to its columns. My time is fully occupied, and I cannot under- 
take to do more. No one can have more at heart the welfare of 
the young men of the country than I have. It is the hope 
of doing something for the benefit of those at the South that 
has led me to take my present office. My only object is to en- 



248 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE.- 

deavor to make them see their true interest, to teach them to 
labor diligently for their improvement, and to prepare them- 
selves for the great work of life. Wishing you every happiness 
and success, I am, etc., R. E. Lee." 

The two following letters, addressed to the distinguished 
scholar from whose tribute to Lee a quotation is made in 
a previous chapter, will be read with peculiar interest : 

" Lexington, Va., February 10, 1866. 
" Mr. P. S. WORSLEY. 

" My dear Sir : I have received the copy of your transla- 
tion of the ' Iliad,' which you so kindly presented to me. Its 
perusal has been my evening's recreation, and I have never en- 
joyed the beauty and grandeur of the poem more than as re- 
cited by you. The translation is as truthful as powerful, and 
faithfully reproduces the imagery and rhythm of the bold original. 

" The undeserved compliment to myself in prose and verse, 
on the first leaves of the volume, I receive as your tribute to 
the merit of my countrymen who struggled for constitutional 
government. 

" With great respect, 3'our obedient servant, 
(Signed) . "R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., March 14, 1866. 
" Mr. P. S. WORSLEY. 

" Mt dear Mr. Worsley : In a letter just received from 
my nephew, Mr. Childe, I regret to learn that, at his last accounts 
from you, you were greatly indisposed. So great is my interest 
in your vsrelfare, that I cannot refrain, even at the risk of intrud- 
ing upon your sick-room, from expressing ray sincere sympathy 
in your affliction. I trust, however, that ere this you have re- 
covered, and are again in perfect health. Like many of your 
tastes and pursuits, I fear you may confine yourself too closely 
to your reading : less mental labor, and more of the fresh air 
of heaven, might bring to you more comfort, and to your friends 
more enjoyment, even in the way in which you now delight 
them. Should a visit to this distracted country promise you 
any recreation, I hope I need not assure you how happy I should 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 249 

be to see you at Lexington. I can give you a quiet room and 
careful nursing, and a liorse that would delight to carry you over 
our beautiful mountains. I hope my letter informing you of the 
pleasure I derived from the perusal of your translation of the 
' Iliad,' in which 1 endeavored to express my thanks for the great 
compliment you paid me in its dedication, has informed you of 
my high appreciation of the work. Wishing you every happi- 
ness in this world, and praying that eternal peace may be your 
portion in that to come, 

" I am, most truly, your friend and servant, 

(Signed) "R. E. Lee." 

" Lexington, Va., April 16, 1866. 
'* Lieutenant von Clausenitz, Germany , 

" Sir : I have had the honor to receive your letter of the 
13th of March, offering to translate into German the history of 
the late war in America, which you understood that I was en- 
gaged in writing. 

" It has been my desire to write a history of the campaigns 
in Virginia ; but I have not yet been able to commence it, and it 
is so uncertain that I shall be able to accomplish my purpose, 
that I think it unnecessary to make any arrangements for its 
translation into a foreign language. Should circumstances here- 
after render such a course proper, I shall not forget your kind 
proposition. 

" Thanking you most cordially for the interest you have taken 
in the Southern States, and for the kind sentiments you manifest 
toward myself, 

" I am, with great respect, your obedient servant, 

(Signed) «R. E. Lee." 

" Lexington Va., April 11, 1866. 

''Mr. , Mw YorJc City, N. Y. 

" Sir : I thank you for your offer presented in your note of 
the 9th inst., but I am now unable to purchase works of art of 
any kind. The White House of Pamunkey, as it lives in my 
memory, must suffice for my purpose. 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

(Signed) «R. E. Lbe." 



260 KEMmiSCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

"Lexington, Va., April 30, 1866. 

" Eev. Alex. B. Grosart, 308 Upper Parliament } 
Street, Liverpool, England. ) 

" My dear Sir : I have had the pleasure to receive the 
English Bible which in your note of the 26th ult. you announced 
had been forwarded to my address. It is one of the best copies 
of the Holy Scriptures that I have ever seen, and is particularly 
valuable to me fronx the circumstances associated with its pres- 
entation, and as a token of the generous sympathy of the do- 
nors, among whom I perceive the names of some of England's 
most worthy citizens. 

" I hope you will allow me to repeat my request that you 
will give to them my sincere thanks for a gift so precious. 

" I am extremely obliged to you for the set of 3'our writings 
which accompanied the Bible. After perusal I will place them 
in the library of Washington College, that all connected with 
it may partake of their benefit. 

" I am, with great respect, most cordially yours, 
(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., May 3, 1866. 
" Jf«!S. , Baltimore, Md. 

" I received this morning the gown presented to me by the 
ladies of the Northeastern Branch tables, 40 and 42, at the late 
fair held in Baltimore. 

" I beg that you will express to them my grateful thanks for 
this mark of kindness, which I shall value most highly in re- 
membrance of their munificent bounty bestowed on thousands 
of destitute women and children by the ' Association for the 
Relief of Southern Sufferers,' the fruits of which shall live long 
after those who have received it have mouldered into dust. 
" With great respect, your obedient servant, 
(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., May 5, 1866. 
" C. R. Bishop, Jr., P. 0. Box 483, Petersburg, Va. 

" Sir : I have received your letter of the 1st inst., informing 
me of my election as an honorary member of the Stonewall Lit- 
erary Society of Petersburg. 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 251 

" Please present to the society my grateful thanks for asso- 
ciating me in their laudable design of self-improvement, in ac- 
complishing which I can commend to them no more worthy ex- 
ample than his whose name they have adopted. 

" Very respectfully, 
(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., J/ay 12, 1866. 
" The Ladies of the Southern Belief Fair, Baltimore, Md. 

" I beg leave to present to the ladies of the Southern Relief 
Fair my grateful thanks for the handsome saddle and bridle which 
they have been so kind as to send me from Mr. Farquharson. 

" Were I not reminded at every point to which I turn, at 
the South, of their benevolent labors for its relief, their giu 
would serve to keep me in mind of their sympathy and gener- 
osity. With great respect, 

(Signed) "R. E. Lee." 

" Lexington, Va., May 21, 1866. 
" Mr. W, H. Nettleton, Care of Southwestern ) 
Telegraph- Office, New Orleans, La. j 

" SiK : I am verj- much obliged to you for the kind senti- 
ments expressed in your letter of the 11th inst. toward myself 
and my native State. Your visit to America must have im- 
pressed upon you the fact that, though climate, government, 
and circumstances have produced changes in the character of the 
people, yet in all essential qualities they resemble the races 
from which they are sprung ; and that to no race are we more 
indebted for the virtues which constitute a great people than to 
the Anglo-Saxon. You will carry back with you to England 
my best wishes for your future happiness, and 

"lam, very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

(Signed) "R.E.Lee." 

" Lexington, Va., May 23, 1866. 
" Mr. , Fort Riley, Kansas. 

" My deak Sir : I have received your letter of the 21st ult., 
and send a prospectus of the course of studies, etc., at Washing- 
ton College. 

"You will see the character of instruction given at the 



853 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

institution, and can judge whether it will suit the views you en- 
tertain for the education of your son. If he really desires to 
learn, I think it will aflford him ample opportunity. 

" There are other colleges in Virginia where a student anx- 
ious for the acquisition of knowledge can be accommodated. 

" The University of Virginia at Charlottesville is the largest 
institution of learning at the South, and has enjoyed the high- 
est reputation. After the attainment of a collegiate education, 
such as may desire can enter the schools of law or medicine, and 
acquire the knowledge of a profession. 

" At this place there is an excellent law-school, of which 
Judge Brockenbrough is the principal ; but there is no school 
^f medicine. 

" Hoping that your selection of a school for your son may 
advance his true interest, I remain, respectfully, 

" Your obedient servant, 
(Signed) "R. E. Lee." 

" Colonel . " Lexington, Va., May 25, 1866. 

" My deab CoLOisrEL : In compliance with your request of 
the 21st, I send a general statement of your services while with 
the Army of Northern Virginia. I hope it may answer your 
purpose. But I think an old engineer-officer ought to make a 
good farmer; and I advise you not to abandon such an honor- 
able and independent pursuit, until you are very sure you can 
do better. Very respectfully yours, 

(Signed) « R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., June 1, 1866. 

" Messrs. , South Sharp Street, Baltimore, Md. 

" Gentlemen : I am much obliged to you for your kind 
offer to send me a hat, and appreciate most highly the motives 
which prompt it. When so many are destitute, I dislike to 
have more than I actually require, and yet am unwilling to ap- 
pear insensible to your sentiments of friendship and sympathy. 
I have a very good hat, which will answer my purpose the whole 
year ; and would, therefore, prefer you to give to others what I 
really do not require. If, however, after what I have said, you 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 253 

still wish to present me with what I can well do without, I can- 
not refuse what you say will be a gratification to you. 
" I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,' 

(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 

" Colonel . * Lexington, Va., June 5, 1866. 

" My dear Sir : I have been intending to write to you for 
some weeks ; but, as I knew that what I desire to say would not 
be pleasing, I have deferred from day to day, in the hope that 
the necessity for my letter might be avoided. I think, however, 
it is better that you should know what I have to relate. 

"I fear yom- son John has not been as attentive to his 
studies as he might have been. But, however that may be, he 
certainly has not progressed as I desired him, or as you might 
wish him. It is true, he has been sick ; had an attack of mumps, 
which caused him to be absent for a time ; and indisposition may 
have rendered him indisposed to study. I have, in a friendly 
way, called his attention to his apparent neglect of his studies, 
and to the injury he would thereby do himself, which he received 
in the same spirit in which it was given, and at the time was, no 
doubt, in earnest in his intention to change his course. But, as 
far as I can judge from the reports of his teachers, he is not spend- 
ing his time profitably ; and, unless he should show some marked 
improvement before the end of the session, I would recommend 
you to withdraw him from the college. Such, I may add, is the 
opinion of the Faculty. I do not think it would be to his ad- 
vantage to continue here without reaping an adequate return 
for the expenditure of his time and money. I hope you will ex- 
cuse the freedom with which I have written ; but I have been 
prompted by a desire to give you such information as would en- 
able you to direct the course of your son to his own benefit, and 
your own satisfaction. 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 
(Signed) "R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., August 11, 1866. 

" Messrs. , Richmond^ Va. 

" Gentlemen : I have received the arm-chair which you 
have forwarded to me, at the request of Mr. , of Baltimore. 



254: REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

It possesses for me now a double value, as recalling its former 
use and illustrious associations, with the pleasing remembrance 
of living friends whose kindness never ceases and whose thought- 
ful consideration never wearies. I beg that you will express to 

Mr. my sense of gratitude for his gift, and that you will 

accept my thanks for the agreeable manner in which you have 
presented it. 

" I am, very respectfully, yours, etc., etc., R. E. Lee." 



" Lexington, Va., August 29, 1866. 
-, Richmond, Va. 



" Gentlemen : I have received your letter of the 28th inst., 
and thank you for the compliment tendered me in the proposed 
name of your club. While I feel no desire for such distinction, 
I do not wish to control your preferences, and therefore leave 
the matter to your own decision. It might answer your purposes 
as well, perhaps, to bestow upon your club some real appellation, 
such as ' Virginia,' ' Richmond,' or, if you desire a name more 
closely connected with my own, ' Arlington.' 

"Very respectfully, etc., etc., R. E. Lee." 

" Lexington, Va., August 30, 1866. 
" Mr. William B. Reed, Chestnut Hill, near Philadelphia. 

" My dear Sir : I am greatly indebted to you for the pack- 
age of my father's letters which you have kindly sent me. They 
will be doubly valuable to me, as relics of one whose memory I 
cherish and venerate, and as mementos of your 'sincere regard.' 
I shall take renewed interest in referring to your ' Life of General 
Reed,' and shall endeavor to procure Mr. Dawson's pamphlet on 
* Stony Point.' I have long wished to see some points in the 
chapter on Sergeant Champe in the ' Memoirs ' cleared up. Of 
the main facts I think there can be no reasonable doubt. They 
are narrated with clearness and distinctness, and it is stated that, 
soon after the return of Champe, his story became known to the 
' Legion,' and that he was introduced to General Greene, who 
cheerfully complied with the promises of Washington. The 
' Memoirs ' were first published in 1811 or '12. Many officers of 
the corps must have been then alive — Dr. Irvine certainly was, 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 255 

as also Judge Peter Jolinson and Major Gardner. Tlie latter, in 
his ' Anecdotes of the Revolution,' could hardly have restrained 
the expression of his surprise unless he possessed some knowl- 
edge of the truth of the story. The late Judge Brooke, of the 
Court of Appeals of Virginia, told my brother, C. C. Lee, that he 
was familiar with Champe's enterprise long before the publica- 
tion of the ' Memoirs,' having learned it from his brother, for 
whom Champe's brother was overseer. I cannot think, with Colo- 
nel Allen McLane, that it is a romance. The fact that he, as 
commander of Paulus Hook, did not know of the desertion of 
Champe, is no proof that it did not occur. It is not customary 
in military operations for post commanders to know every thing 
that happens, nor is it usual for the names or acts of those em- 
ployed in secret service to be known. Even their immediate 
commanders are kept in as much ignorance as possible of their 
movements, and the personal staff of the general-in-chief are as 
ignorant of them as the private soldier. 

" That there was a plan for taking Arnold, is proved by the 
letter of Washington, in his own handwriting, of the 20th of Oc- 
tober, 1780, to Major Lee, in which he gives it his approval, 
agrees to the promised rewards, adds certain instructions, and 
directs that under no circumstances should he be put to death. 
Washington is said to have had other objects in view, in the cap- 
ture of Arnold, than saving the life of Andr6. The most impor- 
tant was to ascertain the truth of the information received 
through his confidential agents in New York, that many of his 
officers were connected with Arnold, and after the execution of 
Andr6, 13th of October, he commanded Major Lee to communicate 
it to Champe, with directions to prosecute with vigor the remain- 
ing objects of his instructions, and expressed to him his satisfac- 
tion, in his letter of the 13th of October (also in his own hand- 
writing), at the recepti(?n of the documents from Champe, excul- 
pating the major-general who had been named by his agents. 

" If, in your reading, you can recall any facts tending to de- 
cide the matter, I shall be under additional obligations to you if 
you will mention them. 

" Most truly yours, 

" R. E. Lee." 



256 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

"Lkxington, Va., September 5, 1866. 
" Eon. A. J. Kequiee, 81 Cedar Street, New Torh. 

" My dear Sir : I am very much obliged to you for your kind 
letter of the 32d ult. So many articles formerly belonging to me 
are scattered over the country, that I fear I have not time to de- 
vote to their recovery. I know no one in Buffalo whom I could 
ask to reclaim the Bible in question. If the lady who has it will 
use it as I hope she will, she will herself seek to restore it to its 
rightful owner. I will, therefore, leave the decision of the ques- 
tion to her and her conscience. I have read with great pleasure 
the poem you sent me, and thank you sincerely for your interest 
in my behalf. 

" With great respect, etc., R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., September 26, 1866. 
" Mrs. Miles Lells, St. Louis, Mo. 

" I received, this morning, your letter of the 19th inst., and 
hasten to express my deep sympathy in the object of the Southern 
Relief Association of St. Louis. A cause so benevolent as the 
relief of suffering women and children will be sure to elicit the 
kindest feelings of your great and populous city, and awaken the 
interest of the whole West in your enterprise. Its success, there- 
fore, cannot be doubtful, and I feel assured the result will equal 
your highest expectations. You may be certain of the profound 
gratitude of the people of the South, and of their earnest wishes 
for your prosperity. 

" With great respect, your obedient servant, 

"R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., Novenxber 1, 1866. 
" Mr. "W. Parker Snow, Nyack, iV. Y. 

" My dear Sir : I regret that it will be out of my power to 
furnish you with the information you require for jowc proposed 
work. I can readily understand the nature of the difficulties 
which you will have to encounter, but my time is so fully occu- 
pied with my present engagements, that I can scarcely keep pace 
with my current correspondence. I hope that you will be able 
to visit the scenes of the events you describe, and to ascertain 
the true circumstances connected with them. I feel assured that 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 257 

all concerned at the South will take pleasure in giving you any 
information in their power. As you state that you did not re- 
ceive my answer to your former letter, I inclose you a copy. 
" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

" R. E. Lee." 

" Lexington, Ya., December 13, 1866. 
^^ General Thomas L. Rosser, 634 Lexington Street, Baltimore. 

" My dear General : I have considered the questions in 
your letter of the 8th inst., and am unable to advise as to the 
efl&cacy of the scheme proposed for the accomplishment of the 
object in view. That can be better determined by those more 
conversant with similar plans than I am. 

" As regards the erection of such a monument as is contem- 
plated, my conviction is, that, however grateful it would be to the 
feelings of the South, the attempt, in the present condition of 
the country, would have the effect of retarding instead of accel- 
erating its accomplishment, and of continuing if not adding to 
the difficulties under which the Southern people labor. All, J 
think, that can now be done is to aid our noble and generous 
women in their efforts to protect the graves and mark the last 
resting-places of those who have fallen, and wait for better times. 

" I am very glad to hear of your comfortable establishment 
in Baltimore, and that Mrs. Rosser is with you. Please present 
to her my warm regards. It would give me great pleasure to 
meet you both anywhere, and especially at times of leisure in the 
mountains of Virginia, but such times look too distant for me to 
contemplate, much less for me now to make arrangements for. 
" Very truly yours, R, E. Lee." 

" Lexington, Va., December 15, 1865. 
^^ Mrs. . 

"I received yesterday your letter of the 6th inst., inviting 
me to Baltimore, and hasten to return my sincere thanks for the 
kind and earnest manner in which it was given. 

" I am fully aware of the many and repeated acts of sympa- 
thy and relief bestowed by the generous citizens of Baltimore 
upon the people of the South, acts which will always be remem- 
17 



258 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

bered, but wliicli can never be repaid, and which will forever 
stand as monuments of their Christian charity and kindness. 

" I know, too, that by their munificence they have brought 
loss and suffering on themselves, for which I trust God will 
reward them. I need not, I hope, assure you of the pleasure it 
would give me to express to them the gratitude I fecl^ but I 
cannot do it in the way you propose, even if my engagements 
permitted ; and I therefore hope you will excuse me for declin- 
ing your invitation. 

" The exercises of the college are only suspended Christmas- 
day, and my presence here is required. 

" With great respect, R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., April 16, 1867. 
" Hev. John W. Buown, Hector of St. AniVs, Middletoim, Del. 

" My deak Sik : I have received your letter of the 11th inst., 
inclosing your draft for eighty dollars for the relief of the suffer- 
ing people of the South. In its application I will endeavor to 
select objects worthy of the donation ; and I feel assured that 
the blessing of God will accompany a gift dictated by benevo- 
lent motives, and hallowed by pious memories. I sympathize 
with you deeply in the death of your noble brother, and trust 
he has received the reward of duty faithfully performed. 
" With great respect, your obedient servant, 

(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 

The following outburst of feeling on the release of his 
waiTn personal friend (ex-President Davis) from prison vnll 
be read witli deep interest : 

" Lexington, Va., June 1, 1867. 
" Eon. Jefferson Davis. 

" My deak Mr. Davis : You can conceive better than I can 
express the misery which your friends have suffered from your 
long imprisonment, and the other afllictions incident thereto. 
To none has this been more painful than to me, and the impossi- 
bility of affording relief has added to my distress. Your release 
has lifted a load from my heart which I have not words to tell, 
.and my daily prayer to the great Ruler of the world is, that He 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 259 

may shield you from all future harm, guard you from all evil, and 
give you that peace which the world cannot take away. 

" That the rest of your days may be triumphantly happy 
is the sincere and earnest wish of 

" Your most obedient, faithful friend and servant, 

" R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., June 18, 1867. 
" Mr. H. S. McKee, Eastman Business College^ PougTikeepsie^ N. Y. 

" My dear Sir : I beg leave to return my sincere thanks to 
the ' Lee Association ' for the handsome photographic picture 
of its founders. It will keep in my remembrance the youthful 
features of those whose friendly sentiments will cause them to 
live always in my heart. 

" With my best wishes for the success of your Association, 
and for the individual happiness of all its members, 
" I ana, with great respect, your obedient servant, 

" R. E. Lee." 



" Washington College, Lexington Va., June 18, 1867. 
'•'■ Mr. E. V. Elliot, President Ghent College^ ) 
Care of James 8. Franh, Ohent^ Ky. ) 
" My dbae Sir : I have received your letter of the 1st inst., 
and highly appreciate the invitation of the Board of Directors of 
Ghent College, Ky,, to visit their institution at its opening on 
the 1st of September next, and regret that it will not be in my 
power to do so. I beg, therefore, that you will present to the 
board my sincere thanks for their invitation, and my earnest 
wishes for the success of their college. 

" At no period in the history of the country was the right 
education of its youth of so much importance to its w^elfare as 
at present, and the establishment of every suitable institution of 
learning should be a source of congratulation to its citizens. 

"Reciprocating all your friendly sentiments, and hoping 
that our acquaintance may be extended, 

" I am, with great respect, your obedient servant, 

" R. E. Lee." 



260 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" Lexington, Va., June 24, 186*7. 
•* Jfra. Ann Upshuk Jones, 156 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, JV. Y. 

" My dear Madam : I have had the honor to receive your 
letter of the 17th inst., and send to your address a catalogue of 
Washington College, and a copy of its charter and laws. On 
the thirty-seventh page of the former, and the eleventh of the 
latter, you will find what is prescribed on the subject of religion. 
I do not know that it ever has been sectarian in its character 
since it was chartered as a college ; but it certainly is not so 
now. Located in a Presbyterian community, it is natural that 
most of its trustees and Faculty should be of that denomination, 
though the rector, president, and several of the professors, are 
members of the Episcopal Church. It is the furthest from my 
wish to divert any donation from the Theological Seminary at 
Alexandria, for I am well acquainted with the merits of the in- 
stitution, have a high respect for its professors, and am an ear- 
nest advocate of its object. I only give you the information 
you desire, and wish you to follow your own preferences in the 
matter. "With great respect, your obedient servant, 

« R. E. Lee." 

The several letters wliicli follow are specimens of a large 
number of the same character which his rigid conscientious- 
ness compelled him to write : 

"Near Cartersville, Va., Si'ptember 4, 1865. 

" Major . 

" My dear Major : I have received your note of the 1st, 
expressing your wish to use my name as reference in the part- 
nership you propose entering into with Captain , for con- 
ducting a general commission business in Richmond. My offi- 
cial intercourse has been so large, and my military connection 
so extensive with the people of the Southern States, during the 
last four years, that, were I to begin to indorse all who with 
equal jsropriety might apply to me, it would defeat the objects 
in view. Neither would I know how to discriminate between 
those who in my opinion possess such great merit, and who have 
won my admiration and regard. Besides, I know nothing of 
commercial affairs, and could say nothing as to their business 



niS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 261 

capacity. The indorsation of business men would be far more 
valuable and appropriate. These considerations have mainly 
compelled me to decline similar applications that have been 
made to me. I hope they may be sufficient to excuse me for not 
violating in your case the rule I have established for my guid- 
ance. I will do any thing personally I can for your benefit, and 
you may always be assured of any aid I can with propriety 
afford. If you will be kind enough to give these reasons to 

Captain , from whom I have received a similar application, 

and of the same date as yours, it will serve as an answer to him. 
With kindest regards to your mother and sisters, 

" I am most truly yours, R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., Afarch 26, 1866. 
" Mrs. . 

" My dear Madam : It would give me much pleasure to do 

any thing in my power for Prof. ■, who, from your account, 

and others that have reached me, I believe showed great kind- 
ness to our prisoners at Elmira. For this he deserves, and will 
no doubt receive, the thanks of the humane, not only at the 
South, but elsewhere ; but of myself I know nothing, and can 
therefore say nothing. Those who are acquainted with the cir- 
cumstances, and can state the facts from their own knowledge, 
are the persons whose testimony would be of weight and value : 
not those who could only repeat from hearsay. I am sorry to 
learn that his sympathy with the unfortunate has brought upon 
him unkind feelings from any quarter, but trust this is only tem- 
porary, and that his conduct will yet redound to his credit. 

" Mrs. Lee joins me in kind regards to you, and to your 
family. You must not think I have forgotten you ; I have you 
and yours distinctly in remembrance. As these letters inclosed 
to me may be of use to you, I return them. 

"With great respect, I am very truly yours, 

(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Ya., March 21, 1866. 

" Mrs. , Georgetown, D. C. 

" With the kindest feelings toward Prof. , from your rep- 
resentation of his character, etc., and with sincere wishes for his 



262 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

welfare, I yet have no personal knowledge of his qualifications 
for the position he seeks, and cannot take the liberty of recom- 
mending him. Testimonials, to be of value, should come from 
persons who can speak positively of his scientific attainments, 
capacity for imparting knowledge, etc., etc. I cannot state what 
I do not know. I regret my inability, therefore, to comply with 
your wishes. With sentiments of high esteem, 

" I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

(Signed) "R. E. Lee." 

" Lesington, Ya., May 14, 1867. 

" Mr. , Oxford^ Miss. 

" My dear Sir : I have received your letter of the 28th 
ult., and regret to have to state that my personal knowledge of 
your qualifications does not enable me to give the statement 
you desire, of your fitness to teach fencing. I would recom- 
mend you to write to the gentlemen with whom you state you 
have served, and who doubtless have the necessary information 
for such evidence as you require. 

" Sincerely sympathizing with you on account of your dis- 
ability, and wishing you every happiness, I am, very respectfully, 

" Your obedient servant, 

«R. E. Lee." 

"Lesington, Va., Marcli 20, 1866. 
" Mr. . 

" My dear Sir : I regret to perceive, by your letter of the 
14th inst., that you have been inconvenienced by my silence. 
My time is so fully occupied, and my correspondence so large, 
that I am only able to attend to letters of business. 

" In your former letter you seemed to desire me to do what 
I did not consider was in my power. I was very glad to read 
the high testimonials in your favor, written by gentlemen ac- 
quainted with you, who knew what they stated, and what I did 
not doubt, but of which I had no personal knowledge, and to 
which I could add nothing. I did not think that the testimony 
of those gentlemen required the indorsement of any one ; and, 
as I had not the pleasure of your acquaintance, or any knowledge 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 2G3 

beyond what they stated, I did not see how I could strengthen 
it. This was the reason of my not replying to your letter. 

. " Sympathizing with you in the circumstances which render 
it necessary, in your opinion, for you to leave your home and 
friends, and wishing you every happiness and success, 
" I am, very respectfull}'^, your obedient servant, 

(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., May 1, 1867. 
«' Mr. . 

" My dear Sik : I have been obliged to refuse so many ap- 
plications from my comrades and friends, to use my name in 
their business references, for reasons which I think will occur to 
you, that I hope you will excuse me for not departing from this 
rule in your case. 

" Wishing you all success and happiness, I am, very respect- 
fully, your obedient servant, 

(Signed) "R. E. Lee." 

The following will be appreciated by the many friends 
of the distinguished gentleman to whom it refers : 

" Lexington, Va., July 5, 186*7. 
'■''Miss JosephijSTE Seaton, 131 St. Paul Street, Baltimore, Md. 

" My dear Miss Seaton : I regret that I am unable to send 
you any circumstance or event that would give interest to the 
history that is proposed of your father's life. My acqviaintance 
with him, and your uncle Gales, though of long standing and 
of the most cordial nature, was altogether social and friendly in 
its relations ; and I have no letters from either on political or 
national events. I retain the most pleasing recollections of 
your father's kindness of manner, gentleness of disposition, and 
character for integrity, and I grieve deeply at his death. You 
have my sincere sympathy in this afflicting event, and my pray- 
ers to Him who cares for the fatherless, that He may guide and 
protect you. 

" With great respect, your obedient servant, 

"R. E. Lee." 



264 REMINISCEXCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" Lexington Ya., October 4, 1867. 
" Colonel C. A. White, Georgetown, D. G. 

" Mt deae Sir : Absence has prevented my earlier reply to 
your letter of the 27th of August. I am unable to refer to offi- 
cial returns, but in a statement made in the fall of 1865, by the 
officer whose business it was to prepare them, the eifective 
strength of the Army of Northern Virginia, on the 5th of May, 
1864, is placed at forty thousand infantry, six thousand cavalry, 
and four thousand artillery, making fifty thousand in all. This 
corresponds with my recollection. Longstreet's corps, and a 
part of E well's, were absent on that day, and it was estimated 
that there were about twenty-five thousand men engaged in the 
battle. Very respectfully your obedient servant, 

"R. E. Lee." 

" Lexington, Va., November V, 1868. 
'■'■Bev. Samuel Botkin, Macon, Ga. 

"Deae Sie : The death of General Howell Cobb was to me, 
as it must have been to every friend of his country, the cause 
of great grief. His death at any j^eriod would have been a 
great calamity ; but at a time when his wise counsel and sound 
judgment were so much needed, it is a double source of afflic- 
tion. ' My sympathy with his bereaved family is as deep as my 
admiration for his character is great, and I sincerely deplore the 
loss sustained by his friends and State. There are none who 
more highly appreciate his worth than myself; but there are 
many more capable of writing the sketch of his life which you 
propose than I am, and to them I must leave it. 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

"R. E. Lee." 

The following letter in reference to the distinguished 

Christian soldier who laid Ms life on the altar of his country, 

should go on the record, and be handed down to the calm 

judgment of the future : 

" Lexington, Va., November 21, 1867. 

" Mrs. Leonidas Polk, Care of Rev. George Beckett, Columlia, Tenn. 

" My deae Madam : I received yesterday your letter of the 

15th, and it will give me great pleasure to furnish you such in- 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 265 

formation as I possess of your lamented husband, whose name 
and character are so dear to the Southern people. I only regret 
that my intercourse with him was such as to enable me to say 
but little of my personal knowledge. His career at West Point, 
if not already familiar to you, can be more fully narrated by his 
classmates, who were in daily association with him ; for, although 
I was there two years with him, he was in a class two years my 
senior, and my intercourse with him was not frequent. I can, 
however, say that he was considered, by the officers and cadets 
with whom I was acquainted, as a model for all that was sol- 
dierly, gentlemanly, and honorable. 

" I do not now recollect to have seen him from the time he 
left West Point until I met him in Richmond at the time he 
was appointed in the Confederate Army. He then informed me 
that he had been offered the commission of major-general, and that 
its acceptance was to him a matter of grave consideration. Be- 
fore accepting it, he intended to have an interview with Bishop 
Meade, to state to him the impressions of his mind on the whole 
subject. To his remarks to me, I replied that I could well con- 
ceive the difficulties which presented themselves, and that in 
my opinion he was the only person who could decide the ques- 
tion. I never saw him again after his departure for Tennessee. 

" He always possessed mj'^ esteem and veneration, and I 
sympathize with you and the country at his death. 

" I am, with great respect, your most obedient servant, 

"R. E. Lee." 

The following letter, written with no expectation of its 
ever being published, will be read with deep interest, as 
throwing light upon various points connected with the cam- 
paigns of the Army of Northern Yirginia. 

Every thing on the subject coming from General Lee's 
pen will not only be eagerly read, and implicitly believed, 
but will increase the general regret that he was not spared 
to give to the world the history of the Army of Northern 
Yirginia — a book which the loorld would have received as 
truth : 



366 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" Lexington, Ya., April 15, 18G8. 
"Wm. M. McDonald, Cool Spring, near Berryville, Clarke County, Va. 

" My deae Sir : I thank you for your kind letter of the 3d 
inst., which I have been unable to answer till to-day. I hope 
that your school history may be of such character as will insure 
its broadest circulation, and prove both interesting and instruc- 
tive to the youth of the whole country. 

" As regards the information you desire, if you will refer to 
my official report of March 6, 1863, which was published in Rich- 
mond in 1864, you will find the general reasons which governed 
my actions ; but whether they will be satisfactory to others is 
problematical. In relation to your first question, I will state 
that, in crossing the Potomac, I did not propose to invade the 
North, for I did not believe that the Army of Northern Virginia 
was strong enough for the purpose, nor was I in any degree in- 
fluenced by popular expectation. My movement was simply in- 
tended to threaten Washington, call the Federal Army north of 
that river, relieve our territory, and enable us to subsist the 
army. I considered it useless to attack the fortifications around 
Alexandria and Washington, behind which the Federal Army 
had taken refuge, and, indeed, I could not have maintained the 
army in Fairfax, so barren was it of subsistence, and so devoid 
were we of transportation. After reaching Frederick City, 
finding that the enemy still retained his positions at Martins- 
burg and Harper's Ferry, and that it became necessary to dis- 
lodge him in order to open our communication through the Val- 
ley for the purpose of obtaining from Richmond the ammimition, 
clothing, etc., of which we were in great need — after detaching 
the necessary troops for the purpose, I was left with but two 
divisions, Longstreet's and D. H. Hill's, to mask the operation. 
That was entirely too weak a force to march on Baltimore, 
which you say was expected, even if such a movement had been 
expedient. 

" As to the battle of Gettysburg, I must again refer you to 
my official accounts. Its loss was occasioned by a combination 
of circumstances. It was commenced in the absence of correct 
intelligence. It was continued in the effort to overcome the 
difficulties by which we were surrounded, and it would have been 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 267 

gained could one determined and united blow have been deliv- 
ered by our whole line. As it was, victory trembled in the bal- 
ance for three days, and the battle resulted in the infliction of as 
great an amount of injury as was received, and in frustrating 
the Federal campaign for the season. 

" I think you will find the answer to your third question in 
my report of the battle of Fredericksburg. In taking up the po- 
sition there, it was with the view of resisting General Burnside's 
advance after crossing the Rappahannock, rather than of pre- 
venting its passage. 

" The plain of Fredericksburg is completely commanded by 
the heights of Stafford, which prevented our occupying it in the 
first instance. 

" Nearly the whole loss that our army sustained during the 
battle arose from the pursuit of the repulsed Federal columns 
into the plain. To have advanced the whole army into the plain 
for the purpose of attacking General Burnside, would have been 
to have insured its destruction by the fire from the continued 
line of guns on the Stafford Hills. It was considered more wise 
to meet the Federal army beyond the reach of their batteries 
than under their muzzles, and even to invite repeated renewal of 
their attacks. When convinced of their inutility, it was easy 
for them under cover of a long, dark, and tempestuous night to 
cross the narrovv river by means of their numerous bridges be- 
fore we could ascertain their purpose. 

" I have been obliged to be very brief in my remarks, but I 
hope that I have been able to present to you some facts which 
may be useful to you in drawing correct conclusions. I must 
ask that you will consider what I have said as intended solely 
for yourself. Very respectfully and truly yours, 

"R. E. Lee." 

Tlie following is of most valuable historic interest, as 
showing the great disparity of numbers between General 
Lee's army and that of his adversary : 
» General Wm. S. Smith. Warm Springs, Va., July 21, 1868. 

" My dear Sir : Your letter has been forwarded to me from 
Lexington. My official records have been destroyed; and in 



2G8 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

the absence of such other information as is accessible to me, I 
am obliged to answer your inquiries from memory. 

" The number of effective men under my command on May 
4, 1864, of all arms, was between forty-five and fifty thousand. 
The losses in the several battles up to June 17th I do not recol- 
lect ; but at the time of withdrawing from the lines around Rich- 
mond and Petersburg, the number of troops amounted to about 
thirtj'-five thousand. 

"Notwithstanding the demonstrations made against our 
front and left at the opening of the campaign of 1864, I be- 
lieved that General Grant would cross the Rapidan on our right, 
and resolved to attack him whenever he presented himself. 

" As regards the movements of General Sherman, it was easy 
to see that, unless they were interrupted, I should be compelled 
to abandon the defense of Richmond, and with a view of arrest- 
ing his progress I so weakened my force by sending reenforce- 
ments to South and North Carolina, that I had not sufficient 
men to man the lines. Had they not been broken, I should 
have abandoned them as soon as General Sherman reached 
the Roanoke. 

"I have understood that the Confederate military records 
are in one of the bureaus at Washington. If so, the official 
returns of the Army of North Virginia will be found among 
them, and exact information can be obtained. I regret that my 
information should be so indefinite ; but, such as it is, I send it 
for your own satisfaction. 

" Wishing you health and happiness, I remain very respect- 
fully yours, R. E. Lee." 

"Washington College, Lexington, Va., March 4, 1868. 
"Mt dear Sir: I inclose fifty dollars of the fund con- 
tributed by the Faculty and students for the religious exercises 
of the college ; not in compensation for your voluntary services, 
but in grateful testimony of them. 

" With great respect, your obedient servant, 

«R. E. Lee. 

'■^Rev. J. William Jones." 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 2G9 

" Lexington, Va., March 25, 1868. 

" Mt dear Sie : I thank you most cordially for the valuable 
collection of minerals forwarded with your letter of the 17th ult. 

"Notwithstanding their journey from the Pacific, they were 
so well packed that they arrived in perfect order, and are among 
the most valuable specimens in our cabinet, as they go far to 
supply the places of the gold and silver ores carried away dur- 
ing the war. 

" As a contribution to Washington College by the son of my 
friend and comrade General Albert Sidney Johnston — one of 
the bravest, truest, and noblest men I have ever known — they 
are particularly prized. 

"I beg that you will present my kindest regards to your 
mother, sister, and brother, and accept my best wishes for your 
own health and happiness. 

" Very truly yours, R E. Lee. 

" Mr. Hancock M. Johnston." 

"Washington College, Va., June 23, 1868. 
'''■Dr. S. Matjpin, Chairman of Faculty of Unwersity of Virginia. 

" My deak Sik : In compliance with a resolution of the Fac- 
ulty of Washington College, passed at their last regular meet- 
ing, I have to present their thanks to the Faculty of the Uni- 
versity of Virginia for their invitation to attend the closing 
exercises of the university the present session ; and to express 
their regret that duties, public and private, prevent them from 
accepting it, though it is hoped that several individual members 
will be able to be present on that interesting occasion. 

" I have the honor to be, with great respect, your obedient 
servant, R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., December 18, 1868. 
" Dear Sir : I entirely concur with you in the opinion that 
the education and advancement of the colored people at the 
South can be better attended to by those who are acquainted 
with their characters and wants than by those who are ignorant 
of both ; and I would recommend you to place such funds as 
you may have for their benefit in the hands of ministers of your 



270 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

own Cliurcb, who, I am sure, would expend them judiciously, 
and in whose fidelity you would naturally have faith. You are 
probably acquainted with many, either personally or by reputa- 
tion, to whom you might confide the trust. I can name to you 
two gentlemen of Richmond, Va., the Rev. Drs. Hoge and 
Brown, on whose judgment, kindness, and integrity, you can 
safely rely. From their position in the Presbyterian Church, 
and location at Richmond, they may be able to attend to the 
matter. I could not attend to it — on account of other duties, 
and my isolated position — nor do I know any colored preacher 
competent to take charge of the matter. The colored people in 
this vicinity are doing very well, are progressing favorably, and, 
as far as I know, are not in want. There is abundance of work 
for them, and the whites with whom they are associated retain 
for them the kindest feelings. 

" I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

" R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., Jaimary 8, 1869. 

" My dear Sir : I am much obliged to you for your letter of 
the '29th ult., which I am sure has been prompted by the best of 
motives. I should be glad if General Grant would visit Wash- 
ington College, when I would endeavor to treat him with the 
covirtesy and respect due the President of the United States. 
But if I were to invite him to do so, it might not be agreeable 
to him, and I fear, at this time, my motives might be misunder- 
stood, both by himself and others, and that evil would result 
instead of good. I will, however, bear your suggestion in mind, 
and, should a favorable opportunity ofi"er, will be glad to take 
advantage of it. 

" Wishing you happiness and prosperity, I am, very respect- 
fully, your obedient servant, R. E. Lee." 

" Lexington, Va., December 5, 1868. 

" Mr. , Savannah, Oa. 

" My dear Sir : I return you my thanks for the copy of 
the records of the Union Society of the city of Savannah, an 
organization almost coeval with the colonization of Georgia, 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 271 

which by its sacred works of charity in which it has been labor- 
ing for more than a century has endeared itself to the benevo- 
lent throughout the country. In its new career upon the site of 
the ancient Bethesda, on an enlarged and wider field, I trust 
that its prosperity may be equal to its former usefulness. In re- 
ply to your renewed invitation to deliver before the Society the 
anniversary address, I am unable to give a diiferent answer from 
that I made to your personal application. I regret my inability 
to comply with your request, and assure you that it would 
afford me great pleasure to revisit Savannah, a city to which I 
have been long attached, and in whose citizens I feel the deep- 
est interest. For 3-our cordial invitation to your house, please 
accept my hearty thanks. 

" I am, with great respect, your most obedient servant, 

" R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., February 12, 1869. 
" Colonel . 

" Mt dear Sir : Your generous proposition to give two lect- 
ures for the benefit of the Rockbridge Bible Society, has been 
laid before the executive committee, and I have been requested 
to thank you most cordially for your kind offer, and to say that, 
under the constitution and direction of the society, the several 
churches in the county have been appealed to for the means 
to accomplish the object in view ; and it is hoped that in this 
manner sufficient funds will be obtained. They therefore con- 
sider it inexpedient to resort to other means without express 
direction from the society. 

" In addition to the thanks of the committee, I beg you will 
accept my personal acknowledgments for your kind exjjressions 
toward myself, and will be assured that they are reciprocated. 
You have my earnest wishes for your success and prosperity in 
this life, and my fervent prayers for eternal peace and happiness 
in the world to come. 

" Very truly yours, R. E. Lee." 

" Lexington, Va., February 12, 1869. 

" Mt dear Mrs. : I have received your letter of the 

16th inst., and heartily sympathize in your distress concerning 



273 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

your son. I have requested Prof. W to communicate to me 

such information as he has of the street difficulty in which he was 
involved. His letter, which I inclose, and the resolution passed 
by the Faculty on the subject, contain all the information I have 
on the subject. On the first arrival of your son at college I was 
especially impressed with his appearance and manner, and was 
anxious that he should be favorably located. Until the occur- 
rence which caused him to leave college, I had remarked nothing 
objectionable in his conduct but what might be attributed to 
youthful indiscretion and thoughtlessness ; and as one of these 
instances was calculated to teach him to what such conduct 
would reasonably lead, I was in hopes his own good sense would 
correct it. I, however, hope that this last occurrence will teach 
him a lesson that he will never forget, and save him and you from 
future distress. I hope that he has safely reached you before 
this, and that his contrition and conduct will relieve you from 
fui'ther anxiety. 

" With great respect, your obedient servant, 

" R. E. Lee." 

" Lexington, Va., February 13, 1869. 
" My dear Miss Jones : After long and diligent inquiry, I 
only this moment learned your address, and have been during 
this time greatly mortified at my inability to acknowledge the 
receipt and disposition of your valuable and interesting donation 
to Washington College. The books were arranged in the library 
on their arrival ; the globes in the philosophical department ; and 
the furniture, carpets, sofas, chairs, etc., have been applied to 
the furnishing of the dais of the audience-room of the new chapel, 
to the comfort and ornament of which they are a great addition. 
I have yet made no disposition of the plate and table-ware, and 
they are still in the boxes in which they came. I inclose the 
resolution of thanks passed by the Board of Trustees of the col- 
lege at their annual meeting, to which I beg to add my personal 
acknowledgments and grateful sense of your favor and kindness 
to this institution, and it would give me great pleasure if you 
would visit Lexington at the commencement in June next, the 
third Thursday, that I might then show you the successful opera- 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 373 

tion of the college. Mrs. Lee joins me in sentiments of esteem 
and regard, praying that the great and merciful God may throw 
around you his protecting care and love. 

" I am, with great respect, your obedient servant, 

" R. E. Lee. 
" Miss Anke Upshub Jones, 38 Union Square, New TorTc.'''' 

The following extract contains a bit of quiet humor 
worth preserving: 

"Lexington, Va., February 12, 1869. 
" . . . . Mrs. Lee has determined to act upon your sugges- 
tion, and apply to President Johnson for such of the relics from 
Arlington as are in the Patent-Office. From what I have learned, 
a great many things formerly belonging to General Washington, 
bequeathed to her by her father, in the shape of books, furniture, 
camp equipage, etc., were carried away by individuals, and are 
now scattered over the land. I hope the possessors appreciate 
them, and may imitate the example of their original owner, 
whose conduct must at times be brought to their recollection 
by these silent monitors. In this way they will accomplish good 
to the country." 

"Lexington, Va., March 22, 1869. 
" Hon. George "W. Jones, P. 0. Box 53, Dulmque, Iowa. 

" My deae Sir : I am very much gratified at the reception 
this morning of your letter of the 16th inst., inclosing for my pe- 
rusal one that you had received from General A. C. Dodge, and 
which, as you have given me permission, I will retain ; not 
merely for the kind sentiments toward me, which I feel I ill de- 
serve, but in remembrance of the writer. 

" Were it worth his while to refer to my political record, he 
would have found that I was not in favor of secession, and was 
opposed to war ; in fact, that I was for the Constitution and 
the Union established by our forefathers. No one now is more 
in favor of that Constitution and that Union ; and, as far as I 
know, it is that for which the South has all along contended ; and 
if restored, as I trust they will be, I am sure there will be no 
truer supporters of that Union and that Constitution than the 
18 



274 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

Southern people. But I must not wander into politics, a sub- 
ject I carefully avoid, and will return to your letter. Your com- 
munication of the 15th of January last was especially pleasing 
to me, and I am very glad to have authenticated, under your 
own name, statements which were made to me at the time of 

General 's removal, as well as your high opinion of his 

character. I have never been associated with a person who, as 
far as my knowledge extended, labored more earnestly or more 
honestly for the Government and the welfare of the people than 
he did. When you next come to Virginia, I hope that you Avill 
not halt on the borders, but penetrate the interior of the State, 
and that you will come to Lexington. We shall be very glad 
to see you, and I hope that you will be repaid for your journey 
by the pleasure which j'ou will see your visit affords us. 

" Though rather late, I must thank you for introducing me 

to your friend Mrs. , whom I met last summer at the Warm 

Springs. We found her and her sister most agreeable compan- 
ions and charming ladies. I wished to write to you at that 
time, but they can tell you how closely I was occupied night 
and day, in nursing a sick daughter. I have thought of your 
friends very often since their departure, and hope that their health 
has been permanently benefited by their visit to our mountains, 
and that they will be encouraged to repeat it. 

" Please present my kindest regards to every member of your 
family, especially to your brave sons who aided in our struggle 
for States rights and constitutional government. 

" We failed, but in the good providence of God apparent 
failure often proves a blessing. I trust it may eventuate so in 
this instance. In reference to certain articles which were taken 
from Arlington, about which you inquire, Mrs. Lee is indebted 
to our old friend Captain James May for the order from the 
late Administration for their restoration to her. Congress, 
however, passed a resolution forbidding their return. They Avere 
valuable to her as having belonged to her great-grandmother, 
and having been bequeathed to her by her father. But, as the 
country desires them, she must give them up. I hope their pres- 
ence at the capital will keep in the remembrance of all Ameri- 
cans the principles and virtues of Washington. 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 275 

" With my earnest prayers for the peace and happiness of 
yourself and all your family, I am, with true regard, 

" Your friend and servant, 

" R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., March 26, 1869. 

" , Esq., Fort La/ramie^ Wyoming Terr. 

" My dear Sir : I am very much obliged to you for the bea- 
ver-robe which you have been so kind as to send me. It is the 
liandsomest fur-robe that I have ever seen, and, while protecting 
me from the wintry winds of our mountains, will remind me con- 
tinually of your repeated kindnesses, I sympathized deeply 
with you and your wife, when your brave son fell at the head 
of his company, under the gallant Stuart, in the strug'gle of the 
Southern States for the right of constitutional government. But 
he, I trust, is happy, and I pray that you may all be again united 
in heaven. With my kindest regards and best wishes for your 
happiness, I am very truly yours, R. E. Lee." 

The following is in reply to an offer of the artist to j)re- 
sent him with his great painting, " TIte Meeting hetween Lee 
and Jackson : " 

"White Sdlphub Springs, W. Va., August 21, 1869. 
" Q. D. Julio, St. Louis, Mo. 

" Dear Sir : I am much obliged to you for the sentiments 
expressed toward ine in your letter of the 10th, and I am grate- 
ful for your intention to present to me the picture you describe. 
It is not that I do not appreciate your feelings, or value your 
kindness, that I cannot accept your picture, but that I desire 
you to have all the benefit as well as the credit of your labors. 
I will retain your letter as the pleasing evidence of your gener- 
ous purpose, and with my best wishes for the realization of your 
aspirations and for your complete success in your profession, 
" I am, etc., R. E. Lee." 

" Washington College, Va., September 25, 1869. 
" P. Poole, Secretary Peahody Institute, Pedbody, Mass. 

" Dear Sir : la compliance with your request, I send a 
photograph of mj'self, the last that has been taken, and shall 



276 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

feel honored in its being placed among the ' friends ' of Mr. 
Peabody, for though they can be numbered by millions, yet all 
can appreciate the man who has illustrated his age by his mu- 
nificent charities during his life, and by his wise provisions for 
promoting the happiness of his fellow-creatures, 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

"R. E. Lek" 

"Lexington Va., September 2V, 1869. 
" Mr. Geobge Peabody Russell, Salem^ Mass. 

" My dear Sir : Your letter of the 22d reached me by 
the last mail, and I thank you most sincerely for your interest 
in "Washington College, and your desire to insure its endow- 
ment. The act of the Legislature, passed February 27, 3866, 
modifying the charter of Washington College, as you will see by 
the copies of the charter and by-laws herewith sent, established 
its legal title ' Washington College, Virginia,' which is its cor- 
porate name. Should the college never receive the fund gener- 
ously presented by Mr. Peabody, I shall be as grateful to him 
for his kind intentions as if it had ; but, if it is realized, it will 
enable the college to extend its instructions and enlarge its 
usefulness. Last year the college gave about fifty free scholar- 
ships, that is, free tuition to fifty young men, and this year it 
will have to exceed that number, or exclude meritorious youths 
who are unable to pay for their tuition. These free scholarships 
embrace the following classes: Young men seeking t*o enter 
the Christian ministry of every denomination ; young men in- 
tending to make practical printing and journalism their business 
in life ; meritorious young men who are unable to pay the col- 
lege fees. Students standing first in certain high-schools and 
academies throughout the country receive prize scholarships as 
an incentive to study. Honorary scholarships are awarded to 
students of the college as a reward for high attainments in 
scholarship, and two hundred dollars are annually given to three 
graduates of the degree of Master of Arts, who also receive free 
tuition to enable them to prosecute certain courses of study. 
These free scholarships are granted to promote the cause of edu- 
cation and of learning, and, to be continued or enlarged, require 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER, 277 

the appropriation of funds by the college. I send you one of 
the catalogues of the college, which, if you have time to examine 
it, will explain what we are now doing, and what we propose to 
do whenever our nieans will permit. . . . 

" With my best . wishes for the health of Mr. Peabody and 
your own happiness, I am, with great respect, 

" Most truly yours, R. E. Lee." 

The following graceful acknowledgment of a compliment 
paid him by Mr. George Long, Jr. (son of Prof. George Long), 
of England, is but a specimen of many similar letters which 
he wrote : 

" Lexington, Va., Washington College, December 8, 1869. 
" Dr. J. L. Cabell, University of Virginia. 

" My dbae Doctor : I am obliged to you for informing me 
of the desire of George Long, Jr., to possess my photograph, and 
I take pleasure in forwarding it to one who has so kindly shown 
his interest in the South, and has extended to her people his 
warm sympathy. Such liberal conduct is the natural result of 
an enlarged mind and cultivated intellect, to which he is enti- 
tled by inheritance, birth, and education ; and it is pleasing to 
contemplate one in whom all are combined. With my grateful 
thanks to him and his highly-esteemed father, and my sincere 
regard for yourself and Mrs. Cabell, 

" I am very truly yours, R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., December 14, 1869. 
" General J. B. Goedon, President Southern ) 
Life Insurance Company, Atlanta, Oa. ) 

" Mt dear General : I have received your letter of the 3d 
inst., and am duly sensible of the kind feelings which prompted 
your proposal. It would be a great pleasure to me to be asso- 
ciated with you, Hampton, B. H. Hill, and the other good 
men whose names I see on your list of directors, but I feel 
that I ought not to abandon the position I hold at Washington 
College at this time or as long as I can be of service to it. 
Thanking you for your kind consideration, to which I know I am 



278 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

alone indebted for your proposition to become the President of 
the Southern Life Insurance Company, and with my kindest re- 
gards to Mrs. Gordon, and my best wishes for yourself, 

" I am very truly yours, ' R. E. Lee." 

" Washington College, January ^, 1870. 
" Messrs. Lewis Allen, etc., Committee of Invitation, Peabody, Mass. 

" Gentlemen : In transmitting a copy of the resolutions 
of the Trustees of Washington College in reference to the 
death and funeral of Mr. George Peabody, I beg leave to ex- 
press my regret at being prevented by indisposition from unit- 
ing with the citizens of his native town in paying the last but 
grateful respect to his mortal remains, in accordance with your 
invitation and the request of the trustees of the college. Though 
debarred from being present at his obsequies, his memory will 
live in the hearts of the Southern people, and his virtues be re- 
vered by unborn generations. 

" With great respect, your obedient servant, 

"R. E. Lee." 

. The distinguished gentleman to whom tlie following was 
addressed was (together with Prof. Long) one of the able 
corps of English professors whom Jefferson induced to come 
as the first Faculty of the University of Yirginia :, 

"Washington College, Lexington, Va., February 19, 1870. 
''Prof. J. Hewitt Key, M.A., F. R. S., ) 
21 Westbourne Square, W. London. ) 

" Deae Sir : I have received, by the hands of Colonel Mc- 
Cullough, the two volumes you have presented to the library of 
Washington College, a copy of your ' Philological Essays,' and 
of your 'Latin Grammar.' They are highly valued for their 
intrinsic merit, and for the kind feelings their donation evinces 
toward a State for whose benefit the labors of your early life 
were so well bestowed, and by whose people your memory is 
still warmly cherished. I beg also to return you my sincere 
thanks for the kindness extended to Colonel McCullough during 
his visit to London, and for the interest you take in Washington 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 279 

College. You will lay me under additional obligations if you 
will present my regards to your former colleague, Prof. George 
Long, and my grateful thanks for his excellent translation of 
the Thoughts of the Emperor M. Aurelius Antoninus, my ac- 
knowledgments for which I hope have reached him. 

'' Wishing you much happiness and continued usefulness, I 
am, with great respect, your obedient servant, 

" R. E. Lee." 

" Lexington, Va., February 19, ISVO. 
'"'■ Monsieur Devismes, Falricant des Armes, ) 
Boulevard des Italians, Paris. ) 

" Sir : Colonel McCullough, since his return from France, 
has described to me his interesting visit to your laboratory, and 
your friendly feelings to the people of the Southern States of 
North America. I am, therefore, induced, in presenting to you 
my thanks for the skillful workmanship you bestowed upon the 
beautiful sword sent me by a friend in Paris in 1863, to express 
to you my gratitude for your kind sentiments toward the people 
of the South. 

" With much respect, your obedient servant, 

" R. E. Lee." 

" Lexington, Va., February 26, 1810. 
" General "William S. Habnet, Major- General JJ. 8. A., ) 

St. Louis, Mo. ) 

*' My dear General : I have learned, through a letter from 
General Lilly to a member of the Endowment Committee of 
Washington College, your kind sentiments toward the institu- 
tion, and of your generous donation for the endowment of the 
presidential chair. This information recalls so vividly to my 
mind the kind acts extended to me in former years, that I hope 
you will allow me, in thanking you in the name of the trustees 
of the college for your aid in their plans of education, to express 
to you my individual thanks for the manner in which it has 
been bestowed. 

" Wishing you health and happiness, I am, very respect- 
fully, etc., ^ R. E. Lee." 



280 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

The following is to tlie widow of the late Confederate 
Secretary of "War, General Kandolph : 

"Lexington, Va., March 8, 1870. 
" Mrs. Geo. W. Randolph, 504 Grace Street, Jiichmond, Va. 

"My dear Mrs. Randolph: I have felt great interest in 
the success of the scheme of the Hollywood Memorial Associa- 
tion of Richmond, for the removal of the Confederate dead at 
Gettysburg, since learning of the neglect of their remains on 
the battle-field. I hope that sufficient funds may be collected to 
enable the Association to accomplish this pious work, and I 
feel assured that it will receive the gratefjjl thanks of the humane 
and benevolent. May 1 request you to apply the inclosed amount 
to this object ? 

" I have been greatly pleased to hear of your improved 
health, and trust, for the benefit of the afflicted, and the comfort 
of your friends, you may be entirely restored. 

" With great respect and esteem, I am your most obedient 
servant, R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., March 15, 1870. 
'■'■Hon. Thomas Maetin, General Assembly of Maryland, Annapolis. 

" Dear Sir : I have read with great pleasure your speech 
before the House of- Delegates of Maryland on the 17th ult., ad- 
vocating an appropriation for burying the Confederate dead at 
Point Lookout, in St. Mary's County, Md., which you were so kind 
as to send me in your letter of the 10th inst. It would be a great 
relief to the sorrow of the friends of those brave men, should 
their earthly remains receive the care and respect you propose, 
and the ladies of your county as well as the people of your gen- 
erous State would share their heart-felt gratitude. 

" The ladies composing the Hollywood Memorial Association 
in Virginia are endeavoring to remove the neglected bodies of 
the Confederate dead from the battle-field of Gettysburg to their 
cemetery at Richmond, but the contributions for this purpose, 
owing to the poverty of our people, are as yet so small that 
they are not able to accomplish it. We are, therefore, the more 
grateful to Maryland for the provision she has made and still 



HIS SOCIAL CHARACTER. 281 

contemplates for this object. Those whose final resting-place is 
in her soil, we feel, will be properly cared for. 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., March lY, 1870. 
'■^ Mrs. Maet E. Randolph, 504 Grace Street^ Richmond, Va, 

" My dear Mrs. Randolph : My former letter was intended 
for your own eyes, and I am always reluctant to be brought un- 
necessarily before the public. Still, if you think its publication 
will be any aid to the cause which the Hollywood Memorial As- 
sociation has so kindly undertaken, I cannot refuse the slight 
assistance in my power. I send you a letter recentl}^ received 
from the Hon. Thomas Martin, of the General Assembly of Mary- 
land, and an article that was sent to me from the Baltimore Sun^ 
that you may see what Maryland proposes to do for the decent 
interment of the Confederate dead on her soil. I think, if the 
Hollywood Memorial Association would place itself in communi- 
cation with the committee or trustees charged with the appli- 
cation of the funds appropriated by the State, that it might 
result to their mutual benefit. To obtain aid from the South, 
where all liave to give out of their poverty, individuals or com- 
mittees should be delegated in each State, to canvass or other- 
wise appeal to each county for the small amounts they can spare 
from their subsistence, with the understanding that what is 
received from each State will be applied first for the removal of 
the dead from that State. It is needless to wait for their unsoli- 
cited ofi"erings. The Rev. Dr. , of the Methodist Church, an 

ardent friend of the South, intends visiting different sections in 
aid of religious objects, and has offered specially to advocate this 
object. Mrs. Lee sent you his letter, which I hope you have re- 
ceived. This is one way of bringing this enterprise to the notice 
of the people. I am sorry that you could not confirm the favor- 
able accounts I had received of your health, but I trust you will 
soon do so. 

" You must get well. Mrs. Lee and my daughters send their 
affectionate love. 

" With kindest regards, I am yours most truly, 

" R. E. Lee." 



283 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

Pages more could be easily written illustrating General 
Lee's polite kindness, his social disposition, and his tender 
regard for the feelings of others ; but the above must suffice, 
while I pass to another phase of his character equally marked, 
but not at all inconsistent with this. 



CHAPTER Yin. 

HIS FIRMNESS EST CAEKTmG OUT HIS PUKPOSES. 

Yet, while always kind and courteous, and willing to 
sacrifice personal convenience and feeling for others, General 
Lee had a proper sense of what was his due, and always, 
quietly but firmly, demanded this. 

A newspaper correspondent once came to Lexington to 
" interview " him, and when he indicated his pui-pose the 
general said : "If you come to see me as one gentleman calls 
on another, I shall be glad to entertain you, sir ; but if you 
come to report for the newspapers my private conversation, 
I have nothing further to say." The fellow still persisted, 
until the old hero arose and with quiet dignity and grace 
opened the door and bowed him out of the room. 

The writer was present upon one occasion when an agent 
for the sale of a certain catchpenny book about the war called 
to see him, and the following colloquy ensued : 

Agent. "I sent you the other day, general, a copy of 
this book which I am eng-affed in selling." 

General Lee. " Yes, sir, I received it, and am obliged for 
your kindness." 

Agent. " I called this morning to get you to give me a 
recommendation of the work. A line from you would be 
worth a great deal to me." 

General Lee. "You must excuse me, sir; I cannot rec- 
ommend a book which I have not read, and never expect to 
read." 



284: REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

I have spoken of tlie modest humilitj, spirit of self-denial, 
and gentle meekness, of this great man. But it must not be 
inferred that he was not, at the same time, firm in maintaining 
his opinions, and almost severe in carrying out his authority. 
No one ever bowed more submissively than he to what he 
recognized as superior authority. Mr. Jefferson Davis, in his 
eulogy, in Kichmond, said that he always found him ready to 
obey to the letter any orders emanating from his ofiice or 
that of the Confederate Secretary of "War, and during his last 
illness he showed this spirit by taking cheerfully any medicine 
given him by his attending physicians, although he would 
sometimes refuse it when offered by others. But when, on 
the other hand, he was placed in authority, he expected and 
enforced the most rigid obedience from his subordinates. His 
staff speak of him as being stern and even severe upon delin- 
quents. And while all this was kept very quiet, it was no 
uncommon thing for his higher officers to receive from their 
loved chief the most severe rebukes. 

When he first took charge of "Washington College he at 
once, in his quiet way, gave both professors and students to 
understand" that he was president, and meant to control the 
affairs of the institution. He at once introduced sundry re- 
forms, which affected both professors and students; and 
while he won the love of all by his gentleness, he inspired all 
with a mortal dread of meeting the disapprobation of " the 
general." The professors would make any effort, and submit 
to any sacrifice, rather than incur the slightest censure from 
their honored president, and the students considered it a great 
misfortune to be summoned to go to General Lee's office. 
The result was, that no college in the land had a harder-work- 
ing Faculty, or a better-behaved, more orderly set of students. 
If he employed workmen, while he was always kind and po- 
lite, he gave them to understand distinctly that they must 
follow to the letter his directions. 

In the administration of the affairs of the college. General 
Lee was very particular about small matters, and required 



HIS FIRMNESS IN CARRYING OUT HIS PURPOSES. 265 

that evej^y thing belonging to it should be properly used, taken 
care of, and accounted for. His keen eye was sure to detect 
the slightest departure from this inflexible law. If an old 
fence was removed, he required that the timbers should be 
carefully preserved ; and when spades, shovels, or axes, were 
worn out, they had to be collected and disposed of to the best 
advantage. 

Upon one occasion a locust-tree had to be cut down to 
make way for some new walks that were being constructed 
through the college-grounds. The efficient proctor (Captain 

G ) directed that a maul which was needed to " set " the 

stone on the walks should be constructed from the butt-end of 
this tree. But the general, who had a great fondness for lo- 
cust posts, had determined to have some gate-posts made from 
this same tree, and, when he found out what had been done, 

he said to Captain G , with some sharpness of tone : 

" Well, sir, your maul will be an expensive one. You might 
have ordered one from New Yorh^ or even imported i^ufrom 
Liverjjool, at less cost." 

During a meeting of the Faculty, one of the professors, 
having occasion to refer to the catalogue of the college, picked 
up one ready wrapped for mailing, and was about to tear off 
the wrapper, when the general stopped him, handed him an- 
other catalogue, and quietly remarked : " We must take care 
of these small matters. Many a man has made his fortune by 
so doing." 

A student was once guilty of a gross breach of college law, 
and brought General Lee a long letter of apology from his 
father. 

One of the professors went into the general's office and 
found him greatly annoyed and provoked. Showing him the 
father's letter, he said : " ISTow it is evident to my mind that 
this is a disingenuous letter. He does not fairly represent 
the facts, and will completely ruin his son, as well as seriously 
interfere with our discipline. Now, sir, I will show you 
what I have written him in reply." The general's letter was 



286 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

a polite and very keen rebuke to one capable of appreciating 
it, but the professor happened to know that it would be en- 
tirely lost on the man to whom it was addressed. Accord- 
ingly he said, pleasantly : " Why, general, he will not appre- 
ciate that ; he will take it as rather an approval of his course." 
The old hero looked vei*y much perplexed, but presently 
replied : " Well, sir, I cannot help it ; if a gentleman can't 
understand the language of a gentleman, he must remain in 
ignorance, for a gentleman cannot write in any other way." 

The system of discipline which he adopted at the college 
abolished the old custom of turning the Faculty into a body 
of spies, to go at unexpected hours into students' rooms, and 
to keep a constant watch for opportunities of catching them 
at some violation of college rules. He used to say, " I have 
but one rule — deport yourselves as gentlemen ; " and he acted 
upon the presumption that the young men were gentlemen, 
and would behave as such, unless they should prove the con- 
trary by their conduct. But if he found that a young man 
would not study, or would not deport himself properly, he 
would deal with him very promptly and decidedly. 

Many incidents are related illustrating not only his firm- 
ness in carrying out his purposes, but his retentive memory 
of, and prompt attention to, small things. 

The Warrenton (Yirginia) Index gives the following : 

" Early in the fall of 1860 he rode over from Arlington 
to the iron-foundery of ,Mr. Schneider, corner of Eighteenth 
Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, and drew from his pocket the 
draft of a peculiar kind of coulter, which he requested to be 
cast for him to use in breaking up a lot of heavy meadow 
sod. The price of the coulter was fixed at two dollars, and 
the general's old market-man called for it a day or two after- 
ward. 

" A few months passed, and the peaceful pursuits of agri- 
culture were exchanged for the strife and turmoil of war. 
General Lee pitched his tent in the South, and the quiet 
scenes of Arlington knew him no more. 



HIS FIRMNESS IN CARRYING OUT HIS PURPOSES. 287 

"Late in 1S61, amid the stirring events that were enact- 
ing around him, and while all the mighty cares and responsi- 
bilities of his position were resting upon General Lee, Mr. 
Schneider received, by the hands of a little boy, two dollar 
gold-pieces, with a brief note of apology for overlooking the 
Httle account." 

When General Lee came to Richmond to tender his ser- 
vices to his native State, his baggage, which had just reached 
New York, was seized on and " confiscated." Among other 
articles was a saddle of peculiar make, which he had be- 
come accustomed to riding, and preferred to all others. He 
at once wrote to the maker in St. Louis that he should be 
glad to have another like it, if he was willing to risk the 
chances of getting his pay in those uncertain times. The 
saddle was promptly sent, and the great soldier was not 
too much occupied to remember to send through a safe 
channel the full amount in specie. The general rode this 
saddle all through the war, and indeed up to the day of his 
death. 

When Mrs. Lee read the above incidents in my MS., she 
expressed herself as particularly gratified that they had been 
given, saying that attention to " small " matters was preemi- 
nently characteristic of General Lee ; and that she thought 
that his example in this respect might be most profitably 
studied by the young people of the present day. 

While General Lee, in fii-mly carrying out his purposes, 
would sometimes have occasion to rebuke sternly his higher 
officers, he was always careful not to do it in the presence of 
others. 

Riding with General Gordon one day on an inspection 
tour, he remarked that certain works were "very badly 
located ; " but, perceiving that some young officers were 
nearer than he supposed, and had probably overheard the 
remark, he immediately added : " But these works were 
located by skillful engineers, who probably know their busi- 
ness better than we do." 



288 ■ REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

One of liis generals once tried, in a confidential inter- 
view, to get General Lee to express liimseK in reference to 
a certain other officer about whom he himself spoke very 
freely. But the old chief merely replied, with a quiet smile : 

" Well, sir, if that is your opinion of General , I can only 

say that you differ very widely from the general himself." 

We have said that General Lee was both firm and perse- 
vering in carrying out his purposes. Two incidents of his 
experience in Mexico, related by the general himself (though 
of course with a veiy different object from the one for which 
we use them), will serve to illustrate this as well as other 
points in his character. 

Not very long before the battle of Buena Yista, General 
Wool was in doubt as to the movements of the enemy, and 
found it very difficult to get reliable information. One even- 
ing he received the most positive assurances that Santa 
Anna, with an immense army, had crossed the mountain and 
was encamped only twenty miles off. Captain R. E. Lee 
happened to be present, and at once volunteered to ascertain 
the truth of the report. His offer was gladly accepted, and 
he was directed to secure a guide, take a company of cavalry 
which would meet him at the outer picket-hne, and proceed 
at once on the scout. Securing, after a good deal of diffi- 
culty, a yoimg Mexican who knew the country. Captain Lee 
quietly showed him his pistols, and told him to expect their 
contents if he played false. By some means he missed the 
picket-post, and consequently his cavalry escort, and found 
hunself, before he was aware of it, some miles beyond the 
American lines with no company but his guide. To go back 
might make it too late to accomplish the scout during the 
night, and he determined to dash on. When within five 
miles of the point at which the enemy were reported, he dis- 
covered by the moonlight that the road was filled with tracks 
of mules and wagons, and, though he could see no artillery 
tracks, he concluded that they had been obliterated by the 
others, and that these were certainly the traces of a large 



HIS FIRMNESS IN CARRYING OUT HIS PURPOSES. 289 

force that had been sent forward to forage, or to reconnoitre, 
and had now returned to the main army. Most officers 
(even the most daring) would have returned upon these evi- 
dences of the truth of the first information that had been 
received. But Captain Lee determined to go on until he 
came to the enemy's picket-posts. To his sui*prise, he did 
not encounter any pickets, and had concluded that he had 
somehow missed them as he had his own, and had gotten un- 
awares within the Mexican lines, when this opinion was con- 
firmed by coming in sight of large camp-fires on a hill-side, 
not far in front of him. His guide, who had been for some 
time very much alarmed, now begged piteously that he 
would go back, saying that there was a stream of water just 
at that point, and he knew that it was Santa Anna's whole 
army, and that to go on would be certain capture and death. 
But Captain Lee determined to have a still nearer view, and, 
allowing the guide to await him at this point, he galloped 
forward. As he came nearer, he saw what seemed to be a 
large number of white tents gleaming in the moonlight ; and, 
encountering no pickets, he rode through the little'town, and 
down to the banks of the stream, on the opposite side of 
which he heard loud talking and the usual noise incident to a 
large camp. Here he discovered that his "white tents" 
were an immense j^oc^ of sheep, and that the supposed anny 
was simply a large train of wagons and a herd of cattle, mules, 
etc., being driven to market. Conversing vsdth the teamsters 
and drovers, he ascertained that Santa Anna had not crossed 
the mountains ; and galloped back to relieve his guide, and 
still more his friends at headquarters, who were having the 
most serious apprehensions concerning his safety. " But," 
said General Lee, " the most delighted man to see me was 
the old Mexican, the father of my guide, with whom I had 
been last seen by any of our people, and whom General 
"Wool had arrested and proposed to hang if I was not forth- 
coming," Notwithstanding he had ridden forty miles that 
night, he only rested three hours before taking a body of 
19 



390 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

cavalry witli wliicli he penetrated far beyond the point to 
which he had before gone, and ascertained definitely the 
position, force, etc., of the enemy. Soon after this he joined 
General Scott, and entered upon that brilliant career which 
illustrated every step of the progress of the American army 
in its march to the city of Mexico. 

At the siege of Vera Cruz, Captain Lee was ordered to 
throw up such works as were necessary to protect a battery 
which was to be manned by the sailors of a certain man-of- 
war, and to use these gallant tars in constructing the work. 
The time being short, the young engineer pushed on the 
work very rapidly, and the sons of Neptune began to com- 
plain loudly. " They did not enlist to dig dirt, and they 
did not like to be put under a ' land-lubber ' anyhow." At 
last the captain of the frigate, a thorough specimen of a 
United States naval ofiicer in the palmy days of the service, 
came to Captain Lee and remonstrated, and then protested 
against the 'outrage' of putting his men to digging dirt. 
" The boys don't want any dirt to hide behind," said the 
brave old tar, with deep earnestness and not a few expletives ; 
" they only want to get at the enemy ; and after you have fin- 
ished your banks we will not stay behind them, M^e will get 
up on top, where we can have a fair fight." Captain Lee 
quietly showed his orders, assured the old salt that he meant 
to carry them out, and pushed on the work, amid curses both 
loud and deep. 

Just about the time the work was completed, the Mexi- 
cans opened upon that point a heavy fire, and these gallant 
sons of the sea were glad enough to take refuge behind their 
despised " bank of dirt," feeling very much like the ragged 
Confederate who said one day, as the bullets flew thick 
against a pit which he had dug the night before, " I don't 
begrudge now nary cupful of dirt I put on this bank ! " 
Kot long afterward the gallant captain, who, by-the-way, was 
something of a character, met Captain Lee, and, feeling that 
some apology was due him, said : " "Well ! I reckon you were 



HIS FIRMNESS IN CARRYING OUT HIS PURPOSES. 291 

right. I suppose tlie dirt did save some of my boys from being 
killed or wounded. But I knew that we would have no use 
for dirt-banks on shipboard, that there what we want is clear 
decks and an open sea. And the fact is, captain, I don't like 
this land-fighting anyway — it ainH clean ! " 

The general related these incidents with evident relish 
(he was fond of talking of events that occurred prior to the 
late war), and gave many details of interest which I am un- 
able to recall. 

The following from the San Antonio Herald is, I be- 
lieve, a well-authenticated incident, save that Captain Lee was 
never a member of General Scott's staif except during the 
Mexican War : 

" The almost uniform success of General Robert E. Lee 
was due probably to the simphcity of the means he invariably 
adopted to attain even the most gigantic results. As an evi- 
dence of this fact, we would call to mind something that our 
people have never known, and the people of St. Louis, those 
most interested, have likely forgotten. Certain it is that by 
these latter no official recognition of General (then Brevet- 
Captain) Lee's services was ever made — not even the poor 
compliment of a notice in the minutes of the Board of Alder- 
men. 

" It will be remembered that many years ago all St. Louis 
was terrified at the prospect of being isolated by the action 
of the river-current, which up to that time had been striking 
its banks, as it swayed from side to side, almost in front of 
the city. But, by washing away the banks on the Illinois 
side, thereby changing the angles of impingement, the stream 
commenced to gradually wear away the soil below St. Louis, 
making its way toward the American bottoms, an alluvial tract, 
and would have finally reached and emptied into a creek some 
five miles below the city, diverting the river and leaving St. 
Louis an inland town. 

" The City Council and the General Government made 
large appropriations, hired the best engineers, built dikes to 



293 rJ';minisohn(JI';s ok <jknkiiai. rohkut h. m;m. 

liiid lJi(!iri uriulcHS, iiud wero liiiiilly ()l)li;^'C!(l to uiimil, 1,li;il, if 
tlion! wiiH cii^-inooriiig skill HullicJont to avert the cuhuiiity, il. 
could not, iio CoiiikI. GciiUiral Scott wuH (!oiiHiiit(!(l to know 
if ill! could not rocoiriniciul Hoino ono cupahh; of ^•nipplin;^ 
tlic |))-ol)I(;tn. Tliu gunoral ropliod: ' I know of hut ono o(li- 
cor, a l)r(ivut-(!aj)taiii on my HtalT. ILi '\h yoiiii<^, hut, if thu 
work can ho dono, ho can do it.' 

" lirovot-Captain Itohcrt K. Loo jirrivcMJ in St. JjouiH and 
W(Mit to work. (Quietly and unoHtoidatiouHly lu; j)n!parod hi^J 
plaiiHj drew hin cJiartw, calculated the force and direction of 
the <!urreritH, exandned all the diwcarded ])lanH, and deter- 
niiiKid on hin (tourw). All thin t<jok conHiderahle tiinc;, he- 
cauKo, art he remarked,' Too iruKili in at Htake to trust to any 
unccsrtain agoncieri, or leave any thin<5 to fortune.' So noise- 
lesHly wore Inn j)r(5parationH carried on tliat thecitizenn Ixi^an 
to murmur at the appjiniut inactivity of tlie young ollicer; 
the Ik*<'j>uMictin and othoi- newH|)aperH attacked 1dm, and at 
last the city withdr(!W itri appropriation. 

"Through nil this a(!(;umidated dissatisfaction (Japtain 
L(M! piu'sucid the (ivcn t(!nor of liis way, mercily remarking, 
when the appro|)i'iation waw withdrawn hy the city: 'They 
luive a right to do as they will with their own ; I Ao not own 
tlie city. The (iovermnont Iuih WMit me here aH Jin ollicer of 
the ai"my to <Io a cortitin w<jrk. J sh.dl do it.' 

" The (iarcful pi-cparations wore ii,t last (jonipleted and 
everything in lUiadiness: a ninnlxir of llat-hoats, sonui p;ir- 
ti;dly l;i,d(',n with stones, others fully, ;i,ccording to the depth 
<d" water in which they were to sink, moored with strong 
ropcsH from each, ho that they could 1x5 (tiist l(»ose t,o the cur- 
retd; at one time, hy one strokes of !in axe, and a plug in i^ich 
HO ari'.'inged tliid, at. a giv(!n signid all the plugs (rould he witJi- 
drnvvn Himult,;ineously. A m;m st.ood r(!:i,dy at each line with 
a li;iichet to cnt looser; a w;il:(th in his hand, with the hour, 
minutd, and second indic:ite(l wIkmi t,o jtull t,he plug. The 
signal to 'cut loose' was the firing of the captiiin's j)ist,ol, 
which heing given, as with one accord every rope was cut, 



HIS riRMNKSS IN ('AltHYIN<i OUT HIS I'lIIU'OHKH. 2()3 

Hiid ilio luxitH, oxfK^tly JiH ciilciilftiod, Hwuii;^ out, l.owiinl I heir 
[H'ojKM' mid d(!Hl,iricd plucoH. (Jiirviii;^ ji(, (irrti, l*y IIm; ^roiil.cr 
force of iJn! <;iirr(!iit, ho Hccunilcdy li.ul (;v(;ry ounce, of \>n-.HH- 
Mi'ii lj(!cn ;iHC(;ii!iiu(;d and provido*! I'ov, iluil, wlioii 1,li(! iiio- 
ifioiit urrivod and every \>\u}>; wan witlidrawii, IIkj hoain wont 
down ill a perfect line, at ri^-lit an^leH to the current, aH in- 
tended. I>uoyH wer(5 fixed, and n<!Xt day (J;i,ptairi liOe paid an 
early vinit to hccj if all wan Hafcj. All waH Hafc, including the 
city of St. LoiiIh. Diiy after day, l>riiHli, HtonoH, etc., wctre 
Hunk until the dilaj tliuH foniMjd rcae-hcd the Hurfac(5 of the 
water. Today c;ii'H croHH the Hatne Htructiirc;, to wlione exJHt- 
<;iice a proud eity ow(!H itH /.^reatrieHH, a HJIent inonuni(!iit lo 
the ^eniiiH of one, who, though (|(!ad, 'still liv<!H.' 

"The /i/f/ji/Mifi/f/n, we helieve, managed to Hay, after 
tli(; work was coni|)lete, 'The tidented yoiii)/^ eriginfii;!' Ii;i,h 
Hucf;(!(ided i/i diverting the curi'ent of the river, notwith- 
Htanding tli<; fearn entertained that hiicIi would not Ikj tluj 
caH<j.' 

"'J'hiH \H hut one notal>le inHtanc<j of ' liCse'H way,' which 
waH ev(jr a HUcccHHful one, wlMttlntr grappling with a Hei(;ntili(; 
or military f)rohl<;m, wluither pi;i,iiniiig tin; H!i,ving or reduc- 
ing of a city. Whether in peace or in war, liin mciiuiH were 
iiH Himj>le, direct, Hpecjdy, and (jIlicaciouH, an tin; reHultn of IiIh 
ufToi'tH were BUCfXJHHful, enduring, and gloriouH." 

Jt IiaH been common in ecu-tain qiiart<;rH to re])reKent that 
(jieneral Lee'H heart was not fully enliKted in tlu! ('on federate 
cause; that lio ent,ered u[)ofi tJio contcHt vrsy reluet;i,ntly ; 
that lie waB njfuly to ahandon it long before he did ; ;ind 
tiiat he waH prevented by otherH from <loirig ho. 

TIkj truth M tliat, having oric(5 *lr;i,wn hir* hvvord, Im; " threw 
away the Hcabbard," Htood firm to tlu; lant, and only yielded to 
"overwhfilmijig numh«;rH and njwjiirceH ; " that tlienj wan not 
in tlie whole South a more rlef,ermin(;d, firmer jnan than thin 
modcHt chieftain. 

Tlujre can h(j little doubt that (i(;nei'al Le,<; bivoi'ed ihe, 
famouH " JJiiffiptou Itoadw Conference," and wan ai;xiouH to 



294 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

obtain for tlie Soutli lionorable terms of peace ; and in the 
same spirit lie wrote as follows to General Grant : 

" Headquarters Confederate States Armies, March 2, 1865. 
" Lieutenant- General U. 8. Grant, commanding United States Armies. 
" General : Lieutenant-General Longstreet has informed 
me that in a recent conversation between himself and Major- 
Geneial Ord, as to the possibility of arriving at a satisfactory 
adjustment of the present unhappy difficulties, by means of a 
military convention, General Ord stated that, if I desired to have 
an interview with you on the subject, 3'ou would not decline, 
provided I had authority to act. Sincerely desiring to leave 
nothing untried which may put an end to the calamities of war, 
I propose to meet you at such convenient time and place as you 
may designate, with the hope that upon an interchange of views 
it may be found practicable to submit the subjects of contro- 
versy between the belligerents to a convention of the kind men- 
tioned. In such an event I am authorized to do whatever the 
result of the proposed interview may render necessary or advis- 
able. Should you accede to this proposition, I would suggest 
that, if agreeable to you, we meet at the place selected by Gen- 
erals Ord and Longstreet for the interview, at 11 a. m., on Mon 

day next. 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

(Signed) "R. E.Lee." 

But, when these overtures had failed, there was no man 
more determined to fight it out to the end than the com- 
mander-in-chief. He said to a Southern Senator, " For my- 
self, I intend to die sword in hand rather than to yield," and 
he went to work to make the best possible disposition of his 
little army. Hon, R. L. Montague (ex-Lieutenant-Governor 
of Virginia) gives the following incident : 

"In 1862 Eichmond was besieged. The Federal gun- 
boats were threatening to move up the river, and the army 
of General McClellan was camped in sight of the capital. 
General Lee devised the plan of relieving the city. I had 



HIS FIRMNESS IN CARRYING OUT HIS PURPOSES. 295 

visited tlie general at liis room at night on business, and after 
it had transpired was about to leave, when he desired me to 
remain. His adjutant then left, and the general detailed to 
me his entire plan for the relief of the city. I said : ^ General, 
if it fail, what then ? Will you abandon Virginia ? ' He im- 
mediately rose from his seat (it was the only time I ever saw 
him the least excited), and, clinching his fist, and with much 
animatio*n, exclaimed : ' JSTever, never ! I will fall back to 
the mountains of Yirginia, and if my soldiers will stand by 
me I 'will fight these peoj^le ' (he always spoke of the enemy 
as ' these people ') ' for years to come ! ' " 

Ex-President Davis says that, in the straits to which they 
were reduced during the latter part of the siege of Peters- 
burg, General Lee said : " With my amiy in the mountains 
of Yirginia, I could carry on this war for twenty years 
longer." He had decided to evacuate Richmond and Peters- 
burg, and had made all of his arrangements to do so about 
the middle of February, 1865. But he was overruled, the 
movement was stopped, his thin line was finally broken by 
the overwhelming numbers opposed to him, and he was thus 
compelled in the face of a victorious enemy of four times his 
numbers to hastily undertake a movement which he desired 
to make secretly and at his leisure. And yet he was calm, 
cheerful, confident, and firm. "I have got my army safe 
out of its breastworks," he said, " and, in order to follow me, 
my enemy must abandon his lines and can derive no further 
benefit from his railroads and James River."' It was his 
purpose to move toward Danville, form a junction with Gen- 
eral Johnston, and strike once more for the independence of 
the Confederacy. But the freshet rendered the streams im- 
passable ; this delay enabled General Grant to throw a heavy 
•force between him and Danville; and, worse still, on reach- 
ing Amelia Court-House he found a cruel disappointment 
awaiting him, in the fact that trains of cars loaded with rations 
for his men, wliich he had ordered to that point, had been 
sent on to Richmond. 



296 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

As there have been so many erroneous accounts of " the 
last days of Lee's army " published, and as the writer was so 
fortunate as to hear General Lee's own description, as he 
gave it to a party of friends, it will be briefly given here, 
both as illustrating General Lee's firmness, and as placing 
right on the record of these great historic events. 

I will not sketch the events of the " running fight " from 
Amelia Springs to Appomattox. Sufiice it to say that Grant 
had been enabled, by having the shorter route, by the delay 
of General Lee on account of the swollen condition of the 
streams, and by the necessary halt at Amelia Court-House, to 
throw his immense army on the flank and rear of his antago- 
nist, to cut off our line of retreat to Danville, and to be in 
position to continually harass our jaded, starving troops. 
The broken-down mules and horses were unable to draff the 
wagons (even lightly loaded) and artillery along the miry 
roads. Sheridan's splendidly mounted and equipped cavalry 
were able to make most advantageous forays upon the trains, 
and often Lee was obliged to halt for hours and fight eight 
or ten times his numbers upon most disadvantageous ground, 
until the jaded teams could pull the trains out of the mud. 
In all of these contests the Army of Northern Yirginia main- 
tained its old prestige ; the men fought with heroic courage, 
and won some most brilliant successes. But the constant 
marching and fighting without rations or sleep steadily and 
surely decimated the thin ranks of this noble band. Men who 
had been true to their colors from the early days of the war, 
fell out of the ranks and were captured, simply because it 
was beyond their power of physical endurance to go any far- 
ther ; many who had been hitherto good soldiers straggled ; 
the devoted and strong found great difiiculty in preserving 
organization and efliciency ; and as the retreat rolled on by 
the light of burning wagons and to the music of hoarse artil- 
lery, mingling with the rattle of small-arms, the corps com- 
manders saw that the days of that grand old army were num- 
bered. 



HIS FIRMNESS IN CARRYING OUT HIS PURPOSES. 297 

Accordingly, on Thursday niglit (the 6th of April), they 
held a conference, at which they commissioned General W. 
IST. Pendleton (chief of artillery) to inform General Lee that 
in their judgment the time had come when negotiations 
should he opened with General Grant. 

General Pendleton thus describes the interview : " Gen- 
eral Lee was lying on the ground. ]!!To other heard the con- 
versation between him and myself. He received my com- 
munication with the reply, ' Oh, no ! I trust it has not come 
to that ; ' and added : ' General, we have yet too many bold 
men to think of laying down our arms. The enemy do not 
fight with spirit, while our boys still do. Besides, if I were 
to say a word to the Federal commander, he would regard it 
as such a confession of weakness as to make it the occasion 
of demanding unconditional surrender — a proposal to which 
I will never listen. I have resolved to die first ; and that, if 
it comes to that, we shall force through or all fall in our 
places. . . . General, this is no new question with me. I 
have never believed we could, against the gigantic combina- 
tion for our subjugation, make good in the long-run our in- 
dependence unless foreign powers should, du-ectly or indi- 
rectly, assist us. This I was sure it was their interest to do, 
and I hoped they would so regard it. But such considera- 
tions really made with me no difference. "We had, I was 
satisfied, sacred principles to maintain and rights to defend, 
for which we were in duty bound to do our best, even if we 
perished in the endeavor ! ' 

" These were, as nearly as I can recall them, the exact 
words of General Lee on that most critical occasion. You 
see in them the soul of the man. What his conscience dic^ 
tated and his judgment decided, there his heart was." 

General Lee did not think proper to comply at once with 
the suggestion of his corps commanders, but on the night of 
the next day (the Yth) he received from General Grant the 
following; letter : 



298 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" April Ith. 
" General R. E, Lbe, Commander 0. 8. A. 

" SiK : The result of the last week must convince you of the 
utter hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army 
of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and 
regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of 
any further effusion of blood, by asking of you the surrender of 
that portion of the Confederate States Army known as the Army 
of Northern Virginia. 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

" U. S. Grant, 
^^ Lieutenant- General, commanding Armies of the United States.''^ 

To this General Lee replied as follows : 

" April 1th. 
" General : I have received your note of this date. Though 
not entirely of the opinion you express of the hopelessness of 
further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia, 
I reciprocate your desire to avoid useless effusion of blood, and 
therefore, before considering your proposition, ask the terms you 
will offer on condition of its surrender. 

" R. E. Lee, General. 

" To Lieutenant-General U. S. Grant, commauding ) 
Armies of the United States." \ 

General Grant sent the following reply : 

" April 8th. 
" To General R. E. Lee, commanding Confederate States Army. 

" General : Your note of last evening, in reply to mine of 
same date, asking the condition on which I will accept the sur- 
render of the Army of Northern Virginia, is just received. 

" In reply, I would say that, peace being my first desire, 
there is but one condition that I insist upon, viz. : 

" That the men surrendered shall be disqualified for t'akipg 
up arms against the Government of the United States until 
properly exchanged. I will meet you, or designate officers to 
meet any officers you may name for the same purpose, at any 
point agreeable to you, for the purpose of arranging definitely 



HIS FIRMNESS IN CARRYING OUT HIS PURPOSES. 399 

the terms upon which the surrender of the Army of Northern 
Virginia will be received. 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

"U. S. Grant, 
^^ Lieutenant- General, commanding Annies of the United States.^'' 

In tlie mean time General Lee was pressing on toward 
Lynchburg, and, on tbe evening of the 8th, his vanguard 
reached Appomattox Station, w^here rations for the army had 
been ordered to be sent from Lynchburg. Four loaded trains 
were in sight, and the famished army about to be supplied, 
when the head of Sheridan's column dashed upon the scene, 
captured the provisions, and drove the vanguard back to 
Appomattox Court-House, four miles off. Sheridan's im- 
petuous troopers met a sudden and bloody check in the streets 
of the village, the colonel commanding the advance being 
killed. That morning General Lee had divided the remnant 
of his army into two wings, under Gordon and Longstreet — 
Gordon having the advance, and Longstreet the rear. Ui^on 
the repulse of the cavalry, Gordon's coi*ps advanced through 
the village and spent another night of sleepless vigilance and 
anxiety, while Longstreet, four miles in the rear, had to in- 
trench, against the Anny of the Potomac under Meade. That 
night General Lee held a council of war with Longstreet, 
Gordon, and Fitz Lee, at which it was determined that 
Gordon should advance early the next morning to " feel " the 
enemy in his front ; that, if there was nothing but cavalry, 
he should press on, followed by Longstreet ; but that, if Grant's 
infantry had gotten up in too large force to be driven, he 
should halt and notify General Lee, that a flag of truce might 
be raised, and the useless sacrifice of life stopped. 

Accordingly, on the morning of the memorable 9th of 
April, Gordon and Fitz Lee attacked Sheridan's splendid 
cavalry, outnumbering them more than four to one, and 
flushed with the full confidence of victory and the assurance 
that, if they needed support, the " Army of the James " was 



300 KEMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

close at hand. Yet, despite these odds and the exhanstion 
of these famishing men, they went into that fight with the 
heroic courage which ever characterized that old corps, and 
proved themselves not unworthy of Stonewall Jackson, Ewell, 
Early, Gordon, Rodes, Kamseur, Pegram, J. A. Walker, C. 
A. Evans, and other noble leaders whom they had been wont 
to follow to victory. Utterly unable to withstand the onset, 
Sheridan hastened in person to hurry up the Ai-my of the 
James, while Gordon drove his " invincible troopers " more 
than a mile, and captured and brought o£E two pieces of artil- 
lery and a large number of prisoners. Had only Sheridan 
barred the way, the surrender had not occurred at Appo- 
mattox Court-House; but Gordon only drove back the cav- 
alry to find himself confronted by the Army of the James, 
and the road blocked by ten times his numbers. 

At this time occurred the touching incident related by 
Colonel Yenable, which is given in a previous chapter, and 
this morning General Grant received the following letter, 
written the day before : 

" April 8th. 

" Generai, : I received, at a late hour, your note of to-day, 
in answer to mine of yesterday. I did not intend to propose 
the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, but to ask the 
terms of your proposition. To be frank, I do not think the 
emergency has arisen to call for the surrender. But, as the 
restoration of peace should be the sole object of all, I desire to 
know whether your proposals would tend to that end. 

" I cannot, therefore, meet you with a view to the surrender 
of the Army of Northern Virginia, but so far as your proposition 
may aifect the Confederate States forces under my command, 
and lead to the restoration of peace, I should be pleased to meet 
you at 10 A. M. to-morrow, on the old stage-road to Richmond, 
between the picket-lines of the two armies. 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

" R. E. Lee, General, Confederate States Armies. 
*' To Lieut.-General Grant, commanding Armies of the United States." 



HIS FIRMNESS IN CARRYING OUT HIS PURPOSES. 301 

The following reply was sent and received on the morn- 
ing of the 9th : 

" General E. E. Lee, commanding C. S. A. 

" General ; Your note of yesterday is received. As I have 
no authority to treat on the subject of peace, the meeting pro- 
posed for 10 A. M. to-day could lead to no good, I will state, 
however, general, that I am equally anxious for peace with your- 
self; and the whole North entertain the same feeling. The 
terms upon which peace can be had are well understood. By 
the South laying down their arms, they will hasten that most 
desirable event, save thousands of human lives, and hundreds 
of millions of property not yet destroyed. 

" Sincerely hoping that all our difficulties may be settled 
without the loss of another life, I subscribe myself, 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

" U. S. Graj^t, Lieutenant- General IT. S. A." 

"The situation" when General Lee received this note 
was simply this : There were only seven thousand eight hun- 
dred and ninety-two jaded, half-famished Confederates with 
arms in their hands, nearly surrounded by eighty thousand 
Federal troops already in position, with heavy reenforcements 
hurrying forward. Gordon fell back through the village, and 
moved to meet an attack of Sheridan on the flank ; the Fed- 
eral infantry was pressing forward, and that heroic remnant 
of our grand old army seemed about to crown their illustri- 
ous deeds with a glorious death, when General Lee deter- 
mined to " take all of the responsibility " of stopping, if he 
could, the further effusion of blood. Accordingly, he had 
a white flag raised, and sent General Grant the following 
note : 

^'' April 9, 1865. 
" General : I received your note this morning, on the picket- 
line, wdiither I had come to meet you, and ascertain definitely 
what terms were embraced in your proposition of yesterday 
with reference to the surrender of this army. 



302 REMINISCENCES OE GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" I now request an interview in accordance with the offer 
contained in your letter of yesterday for that purpose. 
" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

"R. E. Lee, General. 

" To Lieutenant-General Grant, commanding United States Armies." 

General Grant at once returned the following answer : 

''Ajwil 9th. 
" General R. E. Lee, commanding C. S. Armies. 

" Your note of this date is but this moment (11.50 A. m.) re- 
ceived. 

" In consequence of my having passed from the Richmond 
and Lynchburg road to the Farmville and Lynchburg road, I am 
at this writing about four miles west of Walter's Church, and 
will push forward to the front for the purpose of meeting you. 

" Notice sent to me on this road where you wish the inter- 
view to take place, will meet me. 

' Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

" U. S. Grant, Lieutenant- GeneraV 

, That gallant soldier and unconquerable patriot, General 
J. A. Early, says that, in his last interview with General 
Lee, he told him, when speaking of the surrender, that he 
had that morning only seven thousand nine hundred men 
with arms in their hands, but that, when he went to meet 
General Grant, he left orders with Gordon and Longstreet 
to hold themselves in readiness, and that he had determined 
" to cut his way out at all hazards if such terms were not 
granted as he thought his army was entitled to demand." 

What followed is best given by General Lee himself in 
the conversation with the company of friends referred to 
above : 

He said that he had for duty that morning not eight 
thousand men, and that, when he learned from Gordon that 
there was a heavy infantry force in his front, he decided to 
see General Grant and ascertain the terms upon which he 
could end the contest. But, before going to meet him, he left 



HIS FIRMNESS IN CARRYING OUT HIS PURPOSES. 303 

orders with Longs treet and Gordon to liold tlieir commands 
in readiness, determined as he was to cut his way through, 
or perish in the attempt, if such terms were not granted as 
he thought his army entitled to demand. He met General 
Grant between the picket-lines, in the open field, about two 
hundred yards below Appomattox Court-House. 

" You met under an apple-tree, did you not, general ? " 
asked a gentleman present. " No, sir ! " was the reply ; 
" we did not meet under an apple-tree, and I saw no tree 
near. It was in an open field not far from the main road." 
(This explodes the " historic apple-tree," about which so 
much has been said. A gentleman, who was within a few- 
feet of the two generals when they met, pointed out to the 
writer the exact spot. The apple-tree, w^hich was cut to 
pieces, and even the roots of which were dug up and carried 
off by relic-hunters, was fully a quarter of a mile from the 
place of meeting, and the only historic interest that could be 
attached to it was that General Lee rested under its shade a 
few minutes while waiting for the return of his flag of truce. 
The only tree anywhere near the place of meeting was a 
small locust-thorn, which is still standing, about twenty yards 
from the spot.) 

General Lee said that, when he met General Grant, they 
exchanged polite salutations, and he stated to him at once 
that he desired a conference in reference to the subject-mat- 
ter of their correspondence. " General Grant returned you 
yom* sword, did he not, general? " one of the company 
asked. The old hero, straightening himself up, replied, in 
most emphatic tones : " ISTo, sir ! he did not. -He had no op- 
portunity of doing so. I was determined that the side-arms 
of officers should be exempt by the terms of surrender, and 
of course I did not offer him mine. All that was said about 
swords was that General Grant apologized to me for not 
wearing his own sword, saying that it had gone off in his 
baggage, and he had been unable to get it in time." (This 
spoils a great deal of rhetoric about " Grant's magnanimity 



304 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

in returning Lee's sword," and renders as absurd as it is false 
the attempt of l!^orthern artists to put the scene on canvass or 
into statuary. Even General Grant's connivance at this so- 
called " historic scene " will not save it when the world 
knows that E,. E. Lee said that nothing of the sort occurred.) 
General Lee stated in this conversation that he was accom- 
panied, when he met Grant, only by Colonel Charles Marshall, 
of his personal staff, who went with one of General Grant's 
staff to find a suitable room in which to hold the conference ; 
that they were first shown to a vacant house, and, declining 
to use that, were conducted by Major MeClean to his house and 
shown into his parlor. General Grant was accompanied by 
several of his staff-officers, and several of his generals (among 
them Sheridan and Ord) entered the room and participated in 
the slight general conversation that occurred. The two gen- 
erals went aside and sat at a table to confer together, when 
General Lee opened the conversation by saying : " General, 
I deem it due to proper candor and frankness to say at the 
very beginning of this interview that I am not willing even 
to discuss any terms of surrender inconsistent with the honor 
of my army, which I am determined to maintain to the last." 
General Grant replied : " I have no idea of proposing dis- 
honorable terms, general, but I would be glad if you would 
state what you consider honorable terms." General Lee 
then briefly stated the terms upon which he would be willing 
to surrender. Grant expressed himself as satisfied with 
them, and Lee requested that he would formally reduce the 
propositions to writing. 

With a common lead-pencil, General Grant then wrote 
and handed General Lee the following paper : 

"Appomattox Court-House, April 9, 1865. 
" General E. E. Lee, commanding Confederate States Army. 

" In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of 
the 8th inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Array of 
Northern Virginia on the following terms, to wit : '^ 

" Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate, 



HIS FIRMNESS IN CARRYING OUT HIS PURPOSES. 305 

one copy to be given to an officer designated by me, the other 
to be retained by such officers as you may designate. 

" The officers to give their individual parole not to take arms 
against the Government of the United States until properly ex- 
changed ; and each company or regimental commander to sign a 
like parole for the men of their commands. 

" The arms, artillery, and public property, to be parked, and 
stacked, and turned over to the officers appointed by me to re- 
ceive them. 

" This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor 
their private horses or baggage. 

" This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return 
to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority 
so long as they observe their parole, and the laws in force where 
they may reside. 

" Very respectfully, 

" U. S. Grant, Lieutenant- GeneraV* 

General Lee read it carefully and without comment, ex- 
cept to say that most of the horses were tlie private property 
of the men riding them. General Grant replied that such 
horses would be exempt from surrender, and the paper was 
then handed to Colonel Badeau (Grant's secretary), and copies 
in ink made by him and Colonel ]?larshall. While this was 
being done, there were inquiries after the health of mutual 
acquaintances, but nothing bearing on the surrender, except 
that General Lee said that he had on his hands some two or 
three thousand prisoners, for whom he had no rations. Sheri- 
dan at once said, " I have rations for twenty-five thousand 
men." 

General Grant having signed his note, General Lee con- 
ferred with Colonel Marshall, who wrote this brief note of 
acceptance of the terms of surrender offered, General Lee 
striking out the sentence, " I have the honor to reply to your 
communication," and substituting " I have received your let- 
ter of this date." 

20 



306 KEMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" Headquarters Army Northern Virginia, April 9, 1866. 
" General : I have received, your letter of this date, contain- 
ing the terms of surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, as 
proposed by you. As they are substantially the same as those 
expressed in your letter of the 8th inst., they are accepted. I 
■will proceed to designate the proper officers to carry the stipula- 
tions into effect. 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

" R. E. Lee." 

This terminated the interview, and General Lee rode 
back to his headquarters, v^^hieh were three-quarters of a mile 
northeast of the Comi-House. 

The above is the substance, and for the most part the 
exact language, of General Lee's own account of the sur- 
render. 

A great deal that has been said about " Grant's magna- 
nimity," and " Lee's warm thanks for tlie liberal terms ac- 
corded," originated in the imagination of the writers. We 
would not rob General Grant of his just meed of praise for 
the kind courtesy with which he received General Lee, and 
the delicate consideration for the feelings of the vanquished 
with which he conducted.the details of the surrender. 

But he knew perfectly well that he proposed the only 
terms which General Lee would have accepted ; and he was 
too well acquainted with the mettle of that great captain, 
and the heroic remnant of the army which had so often de- 
feated him, not to rejoice in an opportunity of covering him- 
seK with glory by accepting the surrender of Lee's army on 
almost any terms. 

The appearance of General Lee upon this momentous 
occasion was thus described by a correspondent of a Northern 
newspaper, who was present : 

" General Lee looked very much jaded and worn, but 
nevertheless presented the same magnificent physique for 
which he has always been noted. He was neatly dressed in 



HIS FIRMNESS IN CARRYING OUT HIS PURPOSES. 3C7 

gray cloth, without embroidery or any insignia of rank, 
except three stars worn on the turned portion of his coat- 
collar. His cheeks were very much bronzed by exposure, 
but still shone ruddy underneath it all. He is growing quite 
bald, and wears one of the side locks of his hair thrown 
across the upper portion of his forehead, which is as white 
and fair as a woman's. He stands fully six feet one inch in 
height, and weighs something over two hundred pounds, 
without being burdened with a pound of superfluous flesh. 
During the whole interview he was retired and dignified to 
a degree bordering on taciturnity, but was free from all ex- 
hibition of temper or mortification. His demeanor was that 
of a thoroughly possessed gentleman who had a very dis- 
agreeable duty to perform, but was determined to get 
through it as well and as soon as he could." 

As General Lee rode back from this interview, his sad 
countenance told the story to all who met him, and, when he 
explained it to his ofiicers, they one by one took hun by the 
hand, and, with deep emotion, exjDressed their approbation 
of what he had done. 

The announcement was received by the troops generally 
with mingled emotions — satisfaction that " Marse Robert " 
had done right, but bitter grief that it had at last come to 
this. 

As showing the spirit of the men who participated in the 
brilliant action that morning, it may be mentioned that many 
of them crowded around the bearer of one of the flags of 
truce — a widely-known and loved chaplain, who, since the 
capture of his regiment at Spottsylvania Court-House, had 
served with great gallantry on General Gordon's staff — and 
eagerly asked if the enemy had sent in to surrender their 
force on that road, thinking that in flanking us Grant had 
pushed a part of his force too far. They had no dream that 
they were to be surrendered. But gradually the truth broke 
upon them, and great was their chagrin when these high- 
mettled victors in the last battle of the Army of I^orthern 



308 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

Virginia learned that they must "yield to overwhelming 
numbers and resources " — that, after all their marches, battles, 
victories, hardships, and sufferings, the cause they loved better 
than life itself must succumb to superior force. Many 
bosoms heaved with emotion, and 

"Something on the soldier's cheeks 
Washed off the stain of powder." 

The next day General Lee published to the troops the fol- 
lowing order — the last which ever emanated from this peer- 
less soldier — which will go down the ages as a touching me- 
mento of that sad day at Appomattox Court-House : 

" Headquabters Army Northern Virginia, April 10, 1865. 

" After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed 
courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been 
compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources. I 
need not tell the survivors of so many hard-fought battles, who 
have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to this 
result from no distrust of them ; but, feeling that valor and devo- 
tion could accomplish nothing that could compensate for the 
loss that would have attended the continuation of the contest, I 
have determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose 
past services have endeared them to their countrymen. By the 
terms of the agreement, officers and men can return to their 
homes, and remain there until exchanged. 

" You will take with you the satisfaction that p^'oceeds from, 
the consciousness of dut^ faithfully ijerformed ; and I earnestly 
pray that a merciful God will extend to you his blessing and 
protection. With an unceasing admiration of your constancy 
and devotion to your country, and a grateful remembrance of 
your kind and generous consideration of myself, I bid you an 
affectionate farewell. 

(Signed) "R. E. Lee, GeneraV 

The spirit of the private soldiers may be illustrated by 
one of many similar incidents which occurred when the Con- 
federate regiments were stacking their arms : A gallant color- 



HIS FIRMNESS IN CARRYING OUT HIS PURPOSES. 309 

bearer, as lie delivered up the tattered remnant of his flag, 
burst into tears and said to the Federal soldiers who received 
it : " Boys, this is not the first time that you have seen that 
flag. I have borne it in the very fore-front of the battle on 
many a victorious fleld, and I had rather die than surrender 
it now." "Brave fellow," said General Chamberlain, of 
Maine, who heard the remark, " I admire your noble spirit, 
and only regret that I have not the authority to bid you keep 
your flag and carry it home as a precious heirloom." 

The calm dignity of General Lee amid these trying scenes, 
the deep emotion with which the men heard his noble fare- 
well address, and crowded around to shake his hand — how 
they were thrilled by his simple words, "Men, we have 
fought through the war together ; I have done my best for 
you; my heart is too full to say more" — Gordon's noble 
farewell speech — the tender parting of comrades who had 
been bound so closely together by common hardships, sufler- 
inge, dangers, and victories, and now by this sad blighting of 
cherished hopes — can only be appreciated by those who wit- 
nessed that scene which is forever daguerreotyped upon the 
memories and hearts of that remnant of Lee's splendid army. 

And it is proper to add that the Federal soldiers deported 
themselves with a consideration for the feelings of the van- 
quished worthy of all praise. 

I am fortunate in being able to add to this account of the 
sm'render two letters from General Lee to President Davis, 
which have never been published, and which, while of course 
not entering so much into detail, fully confirm the facts given 
above : 

"Petersburg, Va., 3 p. m., April 2, 1865. 
"JKs Excellency Jefferson Davis, Hichmond, Va. 

Mb. President: Your letter of the 1st is just received. I 
have been willing to detach officers to recruit negro troops, and 
sent in the names of many who are desirous of recruiting com- 
panies, battalions, or regiments, to the War Department. Af- 
ter receiving the general orders on that subject, establishing 



mo iu;miniscenoi5S of oenkral robkrt e. lee. 

rccnilliiii^ depots in l.li(! Hevcnil Slalcs, T supposed llial lliis 
in(i(l(' of r.-iisirifj^ (Jk; l.roops wus pr(!i'(M'i-(^<l. I will coniimu! to 
suhuiit tilt! iiaiiii'S of tliosci who oH'or for ilic scrvitu^, nnd whom 
] (l(MMri (!onip('l(!ii(, to ih(! Wnr J )('[)!uLiii('iit ; but, !Uiionjj:; Uic nu- 
merous applications which iiro presented, it is dillicult for nw, to 
decide who are suitable for tlu; duty, I am p^lad yoiu-excelknicy 
has made an appeal lo the Governors of (Ik; States, and ho2)e it 
will hav(! a ^ood ell"e(!t, I have had a {^reat desire to confer with 
you upon our condition, and would have been J-o Richmond be- 
loH! this, but, anliciipatiny," movements of the enemy which have 
occurrcMl, 1 felt uriwilliuf^- to be absent. T have (!onsi(h!red our 
])()sili()n very criti(!al, but have hojjed that the enemy might cx- 
jxtse iiimself in some way that we might take advantage of and 
(tiipphi iiim. Knowing, wIkmi Slieridan moved on our right, that 
our (Rivalry wouitl be unabh; to resist successfully his advance 
upon our (lonmiunicat ions, I detaxrluHl Pickett's division to sup- 
])ort il. At lirst Tickett su(iceedcMl in driving the enemy, who 
foiiglit stuI)l)ornlv ; and, after being reenfoi'ced by tlu; Fifth 
Corps (II. S. A.), ohJiovd IMfk(>it to recedes to the Fivc^FoiikH 
on t!i(^ Dinwiddii^ C/ourl-lloiisi^ and Ford's lioad, wIktc, inifor- 
tni,iatcly, he was yesteiday defeatcMl. To relieve him, 1 had to 
again draw out three brigach^s mider General Anderson, 'which 
so w(^dc(Mied our front lint^ that the enemy last night and this 
morning succeed(>d in })enetra(ing it near the Cox Road, sep- 
araling om- troops anMuid Ihe town from those on Hatcher's 
Run. 'Phis has cMiabled him to extend to the Appomattox, thus 
inclosing and obliging us to contract our lines to the city. I 
have ilirtM^ted tiie troops from the liiu^s on TTaicluM-'s Run, thus 
S(n'er(»d from us, to fall back toward Amelia, (/ourt-llouse, and I 
do not se(^ how I can ])()ssibly help willnhawing from the city to 
the norlh side of tht! A])pomatlox to-night. There is no bridge 
over the Appomattox abovi^ this point nt>arer than Goode's and 
iJevil's, over which the troops above mentioned could cross to 
tluwiorth side and be made available to us ; otherwise I might 
hold this position for a day or two longer, but would have to 
evacuate it eventually, and I think it better for us to abandon 
the whole line on James River to-night if practicable. I have 
siMil preparatory orders to all the oilicers, and will be able to tell 



niS FIRMNESS IN CARRYING OUT HIS PURPOSES. ;jll 

by night whether or not we can remain licre anotlior day ; but 
I think every hour now adds to our difficulties. I regret to bo 
obliged to write such a hurried letter to your (excellency, but T 
am in the presence of the enemy, endeavoring to resist his ad- 
vayce. I am most respectfully and truly yours, 

(Signed) " K. K Lkk, General.^* 

" Nkau Ai'I'omattox CouitT-IIouHK, Va., jipril 12, 18(55. 
" His Excellency Jkffeuhon Davis. 

" Me. Pkmsidknt : It is with pain that I announce to yf)ur 
excellency tlu; surrender of the Arrny of Northern Virginia. 
The operations which preceded this result will be reported in 
full. I will therefore otdy now state that, upon arriving at 
Amelia Court-II(;use on the morning of the 4th, with the ad- 
vance of the army, on the retreat from the lines in front (jf lii(;h- 
mond and Petersburg, and not finding the supplies ordered U) 
be placed tliere, nearly twenty-four hours were lost in endeav(jr- 
ing to collect in the country subsistence for men and horses. 
This delay was fatal, and could not be retrieved. The tn^ops, 
wearied by continued fighting and marching for several days 
and nights, obtained neither rest nor refreshment, and on moving 
on the 5th, on the Uichtnond and Danville llailr(;ad, T found at 
Jetersville the enemy's cavalry, and learned the a{)proach of his 
infantry and the general advance of his army toward Jjurke- 
ville. This deprived us of the use of the railroad, and rendered 
it impracticable to procure from JJanvillc; the supplies ordered 
to meet us at points of our march. Nothing could be obtained 
from the adjacent country. Our route to the Roanoke was 
therefore changed, and the march directed upon Farmville, where 
supplies were ordered from Lynchburg. The change of route 
thnjw the troops over the roads pursued by the artillery and 
wagon-trains west of the railroad, which impeded our advance 
and embarrassed our movements. On the morning of the Gth 
General Longstreet's corps reached Rice's Station on the Lynch- 
burg Railroad. It was followed by the commands of Generals 
R. H. Anderson, Ewell, and Gordon, with orders to close uf)on 
it as fast as the progress of the trains wf>uld permit, or as they 
could l;c directed, on roads farther west. General Anderson, 



312 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

commanding Pickett's and B. R. Johnson's divisions, became dis- 
connected with Mahone's division forming the rear of Longstreet. 
The enemjf's cavalry penetrated the line of march through the 
interval thus left, and attacked the wagon-train moving toward 
Farmville. This caused serious delay in the march of the centre 
and rear of the column, and enabled the enemy to mass upon their 
flank. After successive attacks, Anderson's and E well's corps were 
captured or driven from their position. The latter general, with 
both of his division commanders, Kershaw and Custis Lee, and 
his brigadiers, were taken prisoners. Gordon, who all the morn- 
ing, aided by General W. F. Lee's cavalry, had checked the ad- 
vance of the enemy on the road from Amelia Springs, and pro- 
tected the trains, became exposed to his combined assaults, 
which he bravely resisted and twice repulsed ; but the cavalry 
having been withdrawn to another part of the line of march, 
and the enemy massing heavily on his front and both flanks, re- 
newed the attack about 6 p. m., and drove him from the field in 
much confusion. The army continued its march during the 
night, and every efi'ort was made to reorganize the divisions 
which had been shattered by the day's operations ; but, the men 
being depressed by fatigue and hunger, many threw away their 
arms, while others followed the wagon-trains and embarrassed 
their progress. On the morning of the 7th, rations were issued to 
the troops as they passed Farmville, but, the safety of the trains 
requiring their removal upon the approach of the enemy, all 
could not be supplied. The army, reduced to two corps, under 
Longstreet and Gordon, moved steadily on the road to Appo- 
mattox Court-House, thence its march was ordered by Campbell 
Court-House, through Pittsylvania toward Danville. The roads 
were wretched and the progress slow. By great efibrts the head 
of the column reached Appomattox Court-House on the evening 
of the 8th, and the troops were halted for rest. The march was 
ordered to be resximed at one (1) a. m. on the 9th. Fitz Lee 
with the cavalry, supported by Gordon, was ordered to drive 
the enemy from his front, wheel to the left and cover the pas- 
sage of the trains, while Longstreet, who from Rice's Station 
had formed the rear-guard, should close up and hold the posi- 
tion. Two battalions of artillery and the ammunition-wagons 



HIS FIRMNESS IN CARRYING OUT HIS PURPOSES. 313 

were directed to accompany the army ; the rest of the artillery 
and wagons to move toward Lynchburg. In the early part of 
the night the enemy attacked Walker's artillery-train near Ap- 
pomattox Station on the Lynchburg Railroad, and were repelled. 
Shortly afterward their cavalry dashed toward the Court- House, 
till halted by our line. During the night there were indications 
of a large force massing on our left and front. Fitz Lee was 
directed to ascertain its strength, and to suspend his advance 
till daylight if necessary. About five (5) A. m. on the 9th, with 
Gordon on his left, he moved forward and opened the way. A 
heavy force of the enemy was discovered opposite Gordon's 
right, which, moving in the direction of Appomattox Court- 
House, drove back the left of the cavalry and threatened to cut 
off Gordon from Longstreet : his cavalry at the same time threat- 
ening to envelop his left flank. Gordon withdrew across the 
Appomattox River, and the cavalry advanced on the Lynchburg 
road and became separated from the army. Learning the con- 
dition of affairs on the lines where I had gone, under the expec- 
tation of meeting General Grant, to learn definitely the terms 
he proposed in a communication received from him on the 8th, 
in the event of the surrender of the army, I requested a sus- 
pension of hostilities until these terms could be arranged. In 
the interview which occurred with General Grant, in compliance 
with my request, terms having been agreed on, I surrendered 
that portion of the Army of Northern Virginia which was on 
the field, with its arms, artillery, and wagon-trains, the officers 
and men to be paroled, retaining their side-arms and private ef- 
fects. I deemed this course the best under all the circumstances 
by which we were surrounded. On the morning of the 9th, 
according to the reports of the ordnance-officers, there were 
seven thousand eight hundred and ninety-two (7,892) organized 
infantry with arms, with an average of seventy-five (75) rounds 
of ammunition per man. The artillery, though reduced to sixty- 
three (63) pieces, with ninety-three (93) rounds of ammunition, 
was sufficient. These comprised all the supplies of ordnance that 
could be relied on in the State of Virginia. I have no accu- 
rate report of the cavalry, but believe it did not exceed twenty- 
one hundred (2,100) effective men. The enemy was more than 



314 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

five times our numbers. If we could have forced our way one 
day longer, it would have been at a great sacrifice of life, and at 
its end I did not see how a surrender could have been avoided. 
We had no subsistence for man or horse, and it could not be 
gathered in the country. The suiDplies ordered to Pamplin's Sta- 
tion from Lynchburg could not reach us, and the men, deprived 
of food and sleep for many days, were worn out arid exhausted. 
" With great respect, your obedient servant, 

(Signed) " R. E. Lee, GeneraV 

I have given this detailed account of the surrender, not 
only to illustrate the character of General Lee, but in order 
to place on record (against the many incorrect versions that 
have been published) the true story of Ajpjpomattox Court- 
Hotise. 

General Lee illustrated in his own noble bearing the re- 
mark he made to one of his officers at the surrender — " Hu- 
man virtue should be equal to human calamity " — and gave 
to the world a bright example of firmness under trials such 
as have rarely come upon one of his sensitive nature. He 
bore himself with Roman firmness, until his very heart-strings 
burst asunder, and his pure spirit went to its rest. 



CHAPTER IX. 

HIS LOVE FOR HIS SOLDIERS, AND THEIR ENTHUSIASTIC DEVO- 
TION TO HIM. 

General Lee's affectionate regard for those under his 
charge and his tender solicitude for their welfare were 
equaled only by their admiration and love for him. Unlike 
some military chieftains who would sacrifice thousands of 
men without scruple, if their fame demanded it, he was will- 
ing at any time to allow his own reputation to suffer in order 
to preserve his men. His soldiers knew that he would not 
expose them when he could avoid it ; that it was through no 
fault of his if their rations were scant and their hardships 
many ; and that he regularly robbed liis own poorly-supplied 
mess-table of luxm'ies which friends would send him, in 
order that they might go to his ragged, suffering boys in the 
hospital. 

They knew that their great chieftain cared for their wel- 
fare, and did all in his power to promote it, and their admira- 
tion for his splendid genius as a soldier was even excelled by 
their love for him as a man. Time and again have I seen 
these brave men — many of them the very elite of Southern 
society, who had been raised in luxury, and never knew 
what want was before — ragged, barefooted, and hungry, and 
almost ready to break out into open revolt at the idea that 
their sufferings were due to the inefficiency of the quarter- 
master and commissary departments. But a single word 
from General Lee, assuring the men that the supply depart- 



316 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

ment was doing all that it could to relieve their wants, would 
act like a charm, and the magic words, "Marse Robert says 
60," would hush every mm*mur and complaint. 

When he rode among his troops he was always greet- 
ed with enthusiastic cheers, or other manifestations of love 
and admiration. I one day saw a ragged private, whom he 
met on the road (while riding alone, as was his frequent cus- 
tom), stand with uncovered head, as if in the presence of 
royalty, as he rode by. General Lee instantly took off his own 
hat, and treated the humble man with all possible courtesy 
and respect, and, as he rode on, the soldier enthusiastically 
said : " Grod bless ' Marse Robert ! ' I wish he was emperor 
of this country, and that I was his carriage-driver." 

Nothing so pleases the private soldier as to see his officers 
willing to share his dangers ; and, among our Confederate 
soldiers especially, the officer who did not freely go himself 
wherever he ordered his men, soon lost their confidence and 
respect. But General Lee was an exception to this rule — 
the soldiers could never bear to see him exposed to personal 
danger, and always earnestly remonstrated against it. 

On the morning of May 6, 1864, in the Wilderness, as 
Heth's and Wilcox's divisions, of A. P. Hill's corps, were 
preparing to withdraw from the line of their gallant fight of 
the day before, to give place to Longstreet's corps, which was 
rapidly approaching, the enemy suddenly made upon them a 
furious attack with overwhelming numbers. These brave 
men were borne back by the advancing wave ; General Lind- 
say Walker, with his artillery (superbly served nnder the 
immediate eye of Lee and Hill), was gallantly beating back 
the enemy, but they were gathering for a new attack, and it 
was a crisis in the battle when the head of Longstreet's corps 
dashed upon the field. General Lee rode to meet them, and 
found the old Texas Brigade, led by the gallant Gregg, in 
front. The men had not seen him since their return from 
Tennessee, and as he rode up and said, " Ah ! these are my 
brave Texans — / Tctiow you, and I know that you can and 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 317 

will keep those people back" — they greeted him with even 
more than their accustomed enthusiasm as they hun-ied to 
the front. But they were soon horrified to find that their 
beloved chief was going with them into the thickest of the 
fight. The men began to shout : " Go back, General Lee 1 
Do go back I General Lee to the rear — General Lee to the 
rear I " A ragged veteran stepped from the ranks and seized 
his reins; and at last the whole brigade halted, and ex- 
claimed, with one voice, " "We will not advance unless Gen- 
eral Lee goes back ; but, if he will not expose himself, we 
pledge ourselves to drive the enemy back." Just then Gen- 
eral Lee saw Longstreet, and rode off to give him some order, 
and these gallant Texaus rushed eagerly forward, and nol)ly 
redeemed their pledge. The rest of Longstreet's corps hur- 
ried to the front, Hill's troops rallied, the enemy was driven 
in confusion, and only the wounding of Longstreet at tliis 
unfortunate juncture prevented the utter rout, if not the 
crushing, of that wing of Grant's army. 

On the 10th of May, 18G4, the Confederate lines were 
broken near Spottsylvania Court-IIouse ; the Federal troops 
poured into the opening, and a terrible disaster seemed im- 
minent. As Early's old division, now commanded by Gen- 
eral John B. Gordon, was being rapidly formed to recapture 
the works. General Lee rode to the front and took his posi- 
tion just in advance of the colors of the Forty-ninth Vir- 
ginia Regiment. He uttered not a word — he was not the 
man for theatrical display — but as he quietly took off his hat, 
and sat his war-horse, the very personification of the genius 
of battle, it was evident to all that he meant to lead the charge, 
and a murmur of disapprobation ran down tlie line. Just 
then the gallant Gordon spurred to his side, seized the reins 
of his horse, and exclaimed, with deep anxiety : " General 
Lee, this is no place for you ! Do go to the rear. These 
are Virginians and Georgians, sir — men who have never 
failed — and they will not fail now. — "Will you, boys ? Is it 
necessary for General Lee to lead this charge 'i " 



318 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

Loud cries of " Ko ! no ! General Lee to tlie rear ! — Gen- 
eral Lee to tlie rear ! We always try to do just what General 
Gordon tells us, and we will drive them back if General Lee 
will only go to the rear," burst forth from the ranks. 

While two soldiers led General Lee's horse to the rear, 
Gordon put himself in front of his division, and his clear 
voice rang out above the roar of the battle, "Forward! 
Charge ! and remember your promise to General Lee ! " Not 
Napoleon's magic words to his Old Guard — " The eyes of 
your emperor are upon you ! " — produced a happier effect ; 
and these brave fellows swept grandly forward, stemmed the 
tide, drove back five times their own numbers, retook the 
works, reestablished the Confederate line, and converted a 
threatened disaster into a brilliant victory. 

A similar scene was enacted on the memorable 12th of 
May (when Hancock had broken the Confederate lines), just 
in front of the " bloody angle," where General Lee was only 
prevented from leading Harris's Mississippi Brigade into the 
thickest of that terrible fight by the positive refusal of the 
men to go forward unless their beloved chieftain would go 
to the rear. 

These three incidents are all well authenticated. But 
Miss Emily Mason, in her biography, gives a correspondence 
between Hon. John Thomson Mason and General Lee, in 
which the former details the incident as it occurred with 
Gregg's Texas Brigade, and asks the general about it. The 
reply is characteristic, and is as follows : 

" Lexington, Va., December 7, 1865. 
" My dear Sir : I regret that ray occupations are such as to 
prevent me from writing at present a narrative of the event 
which you request in your letter of the 4th inst. 

" The account you give is substantially correct. General 
Gordon was the officer. It occurred in the battles around Spott- 
sylvania Court-House. 

" With great respect, your friend and servant, 

"R. E.Lee. 

" Hon. John Thomson Mason." 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 319 

These incidents will go on tlie page of history as among 
the grandest battle-scenes of the war ; but General Lee evi- 
dently considered the part he played in them of so little 
importance that he mingles two into one, and does not even 
allude to the tliird. At this time there was the deepest 
anxiety all through the army and throughout the country 
lest General Lee should be killed in battle, and President 
Davis wrote him a touching letter begging that he would not 
needlessly expose his person. 

It was no uncommon sight to see badly-wounded men 
join in the cheers which greeted the appearance of their 
loved chieftain among his troops. 

One day he met coming to the rear a gallant Georgian 
whose right arm was very badly shattered. " I grieve for 
you, my poor fellow," said the tender-hearted chief ; " can I 
do any thing for you ? " " Yes, sir ! " repHed the brave boy 
with a proud smile ; " you can shake hands with me, gen- 
eral, if you will consent to take my left hand," General Lee 
cordially grasped the hand of the ragged hero, spoke a few 
kind words which he could never forget, and sent him on his 
way rejoicing that he had the privilege of suffering under 
such a leader. 

One night some soldiers were overheard discussing the 
tenets of atheism around their camp-fire, when a rough, 
honest fellow cut short the discussion by saying: "Well, 
boys, the rest of us may have developed from monkeys ; but 
I tell you none less than a God could have made such a man 
as ' Marse Robert ! ' " 

"We have already described the scene at Appomattox 
Court-House, and the affectionate enthusiasm with which he 
was greeted by both officers and private soldiers. His fare- 
well address was read amid the weeping of veterans of a 
hundred fields who were really more distressed on account 
of their loved chief than' on their own. How different the 
feelmgs of the troops and of the people of the South toward 
him after the surrender, from those of the army and people 



320 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

of France toward Louis Napoleon after Sedan, or Bazaine 
after Metz ! When General Lee reentered Riclimond — the 
scene of his many triumphs and the reminder of his sad 
disaster — an immense crowd assembled to greet him with 
most marked expressions of admiration and love, as they 
escorted him to his home. And, from that day until his 
death, he received nothing but tokens of enthusiastic devo- 
tion from the soldiers and people whom he had led to a final 
overthrow of all their fondly-cherished hopes. 

Not long after the surrender, the general was waited 
upon by two ragged Confederate soldiers who had just re- 
turned from prison, and who said that they came as the rep- 
resentatives of " sixty other fellows around the corner, who 
are too ragged to come themselves," and who sent them to 
tender their loved chieftain a home in the mountains of Yir- 
ginia. " We will give you," said the spokesman, " a comfort- 
able house and a fine fai-m. We boys will work it for you, 
and you and your family shall never suffer want. And we 
hear, general, that Underwood is going to have you indicted 
and tried for ' treason and rebellion ; ' now, if you will just 
accept our proposition we know a mountain hollow to which 
you can retreat, and we will rally the boys there in force suf- 
ficient to defy the whole Federal army." 

It was with difficulty that General Lee could restrain his 
tears sufficiently to say in reply : " Why, my poor fellows, 
I could not think of accepting your generous offer and being 
a burden to you. Besides, you would not have yom' general 
to hide in the mountains and become what his enemies 
would call a fugitive from justice. No ! I am deeply touched 
at your offer, and cannot command words to express my grat- 
itude, but I must, of course, decline it." 

I'he noble fellows were persistent, insisting that it would 
not be a burden — that they had more land than they wanted 
— and that they would all consider it a high privilege to be 
permitted to work for their loved chief ; and it was only 
after the general had given them suits of his own clothing in 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 321 

place of tlieir rags that, in tlieir eagerness to show tlieir 
treasures to their comrades, he succeeded in getting rid of 
their importunities. 

The offer of these ragged soldiers was but the outgushing 
of the feeling of the whole Southern people. Despite tlieir 
deep poverty they would have bestowed upon Lee houses, 
and lands, and money, that would have made him a mil- 
lionaire had he permitted it. But he preferred to set the 
people the example of earning liis bread by his own honest 
toil, and steadfastly refused to accept all gratuities. 

Upon another occasion he received the following letter 
from one of liis old soldiers, which deeply touched his feelings : 

" Dear General : We have been fighting hard for four 
years, and now the Yankees have got us in Libby Prison. They 
are treating us aAvful bad. The boys want you to get us out if 
you can, but, if you can't, just ride by the Libby, and let us see 
you and give you a good cheer. We will all feel better after it." 

It was touching to witness the tender interest which 
General Lee manifested in the welfare of his old soldiers. 
When in the autumn of 1865 I met him for the first time 
since the surrender, I took occasion to mention a number 
of facts, showing the energy with which our returned sol- 
diers had gone to work to rebuild their ruined fortunes, and 
the scrupulous care with which they were observing the 
terms of their parole, and deporting themselves in a quiet 
and orderly manner, amid the strongest provocation to an 
opposite course. He expressed himself highly gratified, said 
that this was in accordance with his own obseiwation and in- 
formation, and added : " But it is just what we might have 
expected of them ; they were a noble body of men who com- 
posed that army." 

I remember telling him the following incident, which I 

will here give in full, as it deserves to be put on record for 

the use of the future historian : I was traveling one day, in 

the summer of 1865, in Eastern Virginia, when I saw a 

21 



322 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

young man ploiigliing in the field, guiding tlie plougli with 
one hand while an " empty sleeve" hung at his side. I know 
not how it may be with others, but for myself I never see 
the empty sleeve or halting gait of the true Confederate sol- 
dier, that I do not feel inclined to take off my hat in pro- 
found respect for the man. I never pass his vocal grave 
that I do not linger to cast at least one little violet upon it. 
I never see a vacant place of honor or emolument, that I do 
not instinctively look out for some Confederate soldier com- 
petent to fill it ; and I hope never to see the day when I 
shall be unwilling to divide with his widow or orphans the 
last crust that God may give me ! Accordingly, I stopped 
and determined that I would speak with this young man. 
As he drew near, I recognized him as one whom I had bap- 
tized in the army. Our greeting was most cordial, and I was 
deeply touched by his situation. I knew his history : that 
he had been raised in affluence, that the breaking out of the 
war found him at college, with a bright prospect of bearing 
off its highest honors, and winning for himself a high posi- 
tion in his chosen profession ; that he had responded to the 
call of his native State at the first tap of the drum, had 
proved as gallant a soldier as ever kept step to the music of 
" Dixie," and had returned home to find his fortune a wreck, 
and a widowed mother and several helpless orphans depend- 
ent upon him for daily bread. It was sad to see him thus, 
and I expressed myself in terms of warm sympathy. With 
a proud smile the noble fellow replied : " Oh ! it is all right. 
I thank God that I have one arm left, and an opportunity to 
use it for the support of those I love." And he went forth 
cheerfully to his work, guiding the plough with one hand, 
and singing in a clear, ringing voice a stanza of that grand 
old hymn, which, by-the-way, was a great favorite with Gen- 
•.eral Lee, and was sung during his burial services : 

"In every condition — in sickness, in health, 
In poverty's vale, or abounding in wealth, 
At home and abroad, on the land, on the sea, 
As thy days may demand^ shall thy strength ever 5<5." 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 323 

As I told tills incklent of one of liis old soldiers, General 
Lee's face flushed, and with manifest feeling he replied : 
" What a noble fellow ! But it is just like one of our sol- 
diers. The world has never seen nobler men than those who 
belonged to the Army of Northern Virginia." 

He was deeply interested in many details which I was 
able to give him of particular officers and men whom he re- 
membered, and manifested the liveliest satisfaction at hear- 
ing of their welfare. 

But when I told him of the general revival of religion 
then extending through the State, and that large numbers 
of om- returned soldiers were among the converts, tears 
started in his eyes, as he replied with deep emotion : " I am 
delighted to hear that. I wish that all of them would become 
Christians, for it is about all that is left the poor fellows now." 

He said very little about it, but, whenever any place of 
honor or profit was to be filled by his voice or influence, he 
always gave the preference to one of his veterans, and would 
not unfrequently say very quietly, " He was a good soldier." 

When I was starting in the spring of 1869 on a tour 
through several of the Southern States, General Lee said to 
me : " You will meet many of my old soldiers during your 
trip, and I wish you to tell them that I often think of them, 
try every day to pray for them, and am always gratified to 
hear of their prosperity." As this message was repeated at 
different points, strong men wept as they said, " God bless 
the old chief ; he is the noblest specimen of a man that ever 
lived!" 

One day at the White Sulphur Springs, while in the 
large parlor conversing with some ladies, and surrounded by 
the brilliant coterie accustomed to assemble at that abode of 
fashion, he was told that two of his old soldiers desired to 
see him. The men had come down from the mountains to 
bring some marketing, and were dressed in coarse homespun, 
but were so eager to take their loved chieftain by the hand 
that they came direct into the parlor. With that instinctive 



324 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

politeness wliicli characterizes Southern society, the company 
made way for them, and stood silent and deeply-interested 
spectators, while General Lee received these humble men 
with as genuine courtesy and cordiality, and treated them 
with as distinguished consideration, as if they had been scions 
of some royal house. Indeed, the man who could truly say, 
" I was a soldier of the Army of JSTorthern Yirginia, and 
was true to my colors to the last," had in the eyes of this 
great man a badge of honor which no earthly potentate 
could ever bestow. 

His deep interest in honoring the memory of the Con- 
federate dead was evinced upon all suitable occasions. The 
four following letters are specimens of many others he 
wrote : 

" Lexington, Va., June 23, 1866. 
" Mr. War. H. Teavees, Cha/rlestoicn, Jeffermn County^ Va. 

" My dear Sir : I am much gratified to learn, by your let- 
ter of the 21st inst., that the citizens of Jefferson County have 
collected the remains of the Confederate dead in their vicinity, 
and have reinterred them in the cemetery at Charlestovm. It 
would give me pleasure to accept the invitation of the ladies, 
through whose instrumentality this good work has been chiefly 
accomplished, to be present at the services to be performed on 
the 27th inst., but I am compelled to be here at that time to 
attend the commencement at Washington College. I must ask 
you, therefore, to present to the ladies, of whose holy ofiBce the 
graves which contain the ashes thus sacredly collected will be 
enduring monuments, the apology for my absence. 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 
(Signed) « R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., August — , 1866. 
" Miss ViEGiNiA S. Knox, Fredericksburg .^ Va. : 

" I have had the honor to receive your letter of the 3d inst., 
inclosing an appeal of the Ladies' Memorial Association of 
Fredericksburg for the protection of the graves of the dead 
around them. It is one which, I am sure, will touch every hu- 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 325 

mane lieart, and will raise up willing hands to perform the 
sacred labor of collecting, in one hallowed spot, the scattered 
remains of those who now rest far away from their homes and 
families. 

" With my best wishes that success may attend the pious 
efforts of your association, 

"I am, with great respect, yours truly, 
(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., May o, 1866. 
'■'■Mrs. Wm. OoTJLLiNa, Chairman of Committee on Lectures^ etc.^ \ 
" Care of Messrs. Lancaster & Co., Biclimoml: ) 

" I am very much obliged to the ladies of the ' Memorial As- 
sociation for Confederate Dead ' for their invitation to attend 
the inaugural celebration of their society on the 10th inst. It 
would be most grateful to my feelings to unite in the celebra- 
tion of a society formed for so pious an object, but it will be 
impossible for me to do so. 

" The graves of the Confederate dead will always be green 
in my memory, and their deeds be hallowed in my recollection. 
" With great respect, your obedient servant, 

(Signed) " R. E. Lee." 

"Lexington, Va., December 15, 1866. 
'* My dear Fitz: 

" I have considered the subject of your letter, which has been 
unaccountably delayed on the journey, and, though I have no 
desire that my views should govern in the decision of a ques- 
tion in which others are equally interested, T will give them for 
your consideration. In the first place, I have no fears that our 
dead will receive disrespectful treatment at the hands of the 
Gettysburg Association. If they do, it will then be time, as it 
will also furnish the occasion, for us to apply for their transfer to 
our care. I am not in favor of disturbing the ashes of the dead, 
unless for a worthy object, and I know of no fitter resting-place 
for a soldier than the field on which he has nobly laid down his 
life. If our State governments could reflect the wishes of their 
citizens, and each State could receive its own dead, I think it 



336 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

would be very appropriate to return them to their native soil for 
final interment, if possible, and I know it would be soothing to 
the feelings of their friends to have their sacred dust committed 
to their affectionate keeping. But, so far as I know, this can- 
not be done, and perhaps the attempt might prevent the very 
object we wished to accomplish. In the present state of affairs, 
I jiresume nothing would be permitted except individual action 
on the part of respective friends, and I do not know how far 
that would be available. After the action of the Gettysburg 
Association, I think it could be better determined whether any 
good can be accomplished. 

" You must give my best love to your father, mother, and 
brothers. All are as usual, and would unite in my regards did 
they know I was writing. Your affectionate uncle, 

(Signed) " R. E. Lee. 

" General Fitz Lee." 

As the army passed through Farmville, on its retreat 
from Petersburg, General Lee was seen to ride up to the 
home of the widow of the gallant and lamented Colonel 
Thornton. Dismounting, and entering the house, he said, 
with deep emotion, " I have not time to tarry, but I could 
not pass by without stopping for a moment to pay my re- 
spects to the widow of my honored soldier, Colonel Thorn- 
ton, and to tender her my deep sympathy in the sore bereave- 
ment which she sustained when the country was deprived of 
his invaluable services." 

It was this tender feeling for them which, made General 
Lee the idol of his soldiers, and gave him a place in their 
affections which made them seek every opportunity of 
expressing their enthusiastic love and admiration for him. 
His visit to the South, in quest of health, in the spring of 
1870, was one continued ovation, notwithstanding the re- 
straint of his known desire to avoid poj)ular applause ; and 
his old soldiers would come for miles to grasp his hand, and 
gaze once more on his noble form and benevolent counte- 
nance. 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 327 

When the news of liis death flashed over the wires, there 
was mourning in every home in the South, for all of our peo. 
pie felt that they had sustained a personal loss. But his old 
soldiers wept that a loved and \o\'mg father had passed from 
their midst. 

It may be well to put on permanent record a few of the 
expressions of our veterans as they met to honor the memory 
of their grand old chieftain. 

The day after his death a meeting of the oiScers and sol- 
diers of the Confederate Army resident in Rockbridge assem- 
bled in Lexington. Captain A. Graham, Jr., was made chair- 
man, and Rev. J. "William Jones (a former chaplain of the 
Army of Northern Yirginia) was made secretary. Major J. 
B. Dorman reported a series of resolutions, which were unani- 
mously adopted, as follows : 

" 1. Resolved^ That, as humble members of the great army 
of which General Robert Edward Lee was the illustrious head 
and chief, we mourn his death. With feelings untinged by bit- 
ter memories of a stormy past, and with no vain thought of ex- 
alting his name in the opinion of mankind, we meet to do him 
honor. At his open grave, passion must stand abashed, and 
eulogy is dumb. Striving to mount up to that clear air, wherein 
his own spirit dwelt, of calm wisdom and heroic patience, we 
seek only to render a last, simple, but just tribute to his mem- 
ory. At different times, he was known to some or all of us from 
the day that he received the sword of Virginia at the hands of 
her sovereign convention, and from the seven days around Rich- 
mond, through the varying fortunes of an unequal fight, to the 
closing scenes at Appomattox. He has been known to us again 
as the beloved and venerated citizen of our own community, and 
the president of the noble institution of learning to which George 
Washington gave an endowment and a name. We have been 
daily witness to his quiet, unostentatious, Christian life; we 
have seen him prove that * him no adversity could ever move, 
nor policy at any time entice to shrink from God and from his 
word.' Knowing him, as we thus did, in war and in peace, we 



338 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

pronounce him to have been, in all the elements of real great- 
ness which may challenge cavil and defy the touch of time, the 
peer of the most renowned of any age or country, and the fore- 
most American of the wondrous century in which he lived. 

" He is gone from among us — ' gone before the Father ; far 
beyond the twilight judgments of this world ; high above its 
mists and obscurities ' — no more shall we look upon his noble 
form, meet his benignant smile, or receive his kindly greeting. 
But here, where he set his last great example of steadfast, unself- 
ish devotion to duty, the memory of his greatness and his worth 
must ever linger ; and, while we reverently bow in submission 
to the summons of Infinite Wisdom calling him away, we send 
up a solemn aspiration of thankfulness that to us was the honor 
and the blessing of communion with him in his last days on 
earth, and to our people is committed the pious office of con- 
signing his mortal remains to the tomb. Hallowed, through all 
time, shall be the spot whence his spirit passed from earth to 
heaven ! 

" 2. Resolved, That we tender to Mrs. Lee and her family 
the expression of our profound sympathy in an affliction which 
we feel full well can be but little mitigated by poor words of 
human consolation. 

" 3. Resolved, That the usual badges of mourning be worn 
for six months. 

" 4. Resolved, That the officers and soldiers of the late Con- 
federate States resident in Rockbridge unite in an association 
for the erection of a suitable monument at this place ; and that 
the chairman appoint a committee to report a plan of organiza- 
tion to an adjourned meeting on Saturday next." 

Ill Baltimore there was an immense meeting at Masonic 
Temple, presided over by Major-General I. R. Trimble, who 
opened the exercises with an appropriate address which he 
began as follows : 

" Fellow-Soldiers : We are assembled together to express 
our sense of the grievous loss which we have sustained in 
the death of a beloved commander, a man who possessed the 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 339 

enviable power of inspiring, beyond all comparison, more of 
the respect, the admiration, and the love of mankind, for his 
virtues, his genius, and for his kindly, generous nature than 
any distinguished character who has ever inscribed his name 
on the pages of all the histories. We have deemed it our 
appropriate privilege, without any desire for display, to as- 
semble together the companions hi arms of General Lee. We 
claim to-night to feel a peculiar sorrow for the loss of a be- 
loved commander and friend, and no one, we hope, would de- 
ny us the mournful consolation of shedding a soldier's tear 
over a soldier's grave. We accord to all who love him the 
same sacred privilege. We could not hinder them if we 
would, for who shall forbid the hearts of a world from loving 
and mourning for General Robert E. Lee ? Who shall re- 
strain the eyes that weep and tlie tears which fall to sweU 
the ocean of a nation's sorrow ? " 

The following telegram was read to the meeting : 

"Hagerstown, Md., October 15, 1870. 
" To Colonels Charles Marshall, James R. Herbert, ) 
and others, Masonic Temple ; \ 

" Your fellow-soldiers here are stricken with sorrow like 
yours, and unite with you to-night in doing reverence to the 
memory of their great commander. The wounds we felt when 
Stonewall fell bleed afresh, and Virginia is made trebly sacred 
by the graves of Washington, Jackson, and Lee. 

" Heney K. Douglass." 

Colonel Charles Marshall then made the eloquent address 
from which the quotation in a previous chapter is taken. 
He began by saying : 

" In presenting the resolutions of the committee, I cannot 
refrain from expressing the feelings inspired by the memo- 
ries that crowd upon my mind, when I reflect that these reso- 
lutions are intended to express what General Lee's soldiers 
feel toward General Lee. 



330 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" The committee are fully aware of tlieir inability to do 
justice to tlie sentiments that inspire your hearts. How can 
we portray in words the gratitude, the pride, the veneration, 
the grief that now fill the hearts of those who shared his vic- 
tories and his reverses, his triumphs and his defeats ? How 
can we tell the world what we can only feel ourselves ? How 
can we give expression to the crowding memories recalled by 
the sad event we are met to deplore ? " 

He then gave the incidents we have already quoted, 
spoke of the confidence of the soldiers in their chief, and 
concluded as follows : 

" Need I speak of the many exhibitions of that confidence ? 
You all remember them, my comrades. Have you not seen 
a wavering line restored by the magic of his presence ? Have 
you not seen the few forget that they were fighting against 
the many because he was among the few ? But I pass from 
the contemplation of his greatness in war to look to his ex- 
ample under the oppressive circumstances of final failure — to 
look to that example to which it is most useful for us now to 
refer for our guidance and instruction. When the attempt 
to establish the Southern Confederacy had failed, and the 
event of the war seemed to have established the indivisibility 
of the Federal Union, General Lee gave his adhesion to the 
new order of affairs. 

" His was no hollow truce, but, with that pure faith and 
honor that marked every act of his illustrious career, he 
immediately devoted himself to the restoration of peace, 
harmony, and concord. He entered zealously into the subject 
of education, believing, as he often declared, that popular 
education is the only sure foundation of free government. 
He gave his earnest support to all plans of internal improve- 
ments designed to bind more firmly together the social and 
commercial interests of the country, and among the last acts 
of his life was the effort to secure the construction of a line 
of railway communication of incalculable importance as a con- 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 331 

neeting liuk between tlie North and tlie South. He devoted 
all liis great energies to tlie advancement of the welfare of 
his countrymen while shrinking from public notice, and 
sought to lay deep and strong the foundations of the new 
fabric of government which it was supposed would rise from 
the ruins of the old. But I need not repeat to you, my com- 
rades, the history of his life since the war. You have 
watched it to its close, and you know how faithfully and 
truly he performed every duty of his position. 

" Let us take to heart the lesson of his bright example. 
Disregarding all that malice may impute to us, with an eye 
single to the faithful performance of our duties as American 
citizens, and with the honest and sincere resolution to sup- 
port with heart and hand the honor, the safety, and the true 
liberties of our country, let us invoke our fellow-citizens to 
forget the animosities of the past by the side of this honored 
grave, and 'joining hands around this royal corpse, friends 
now, enemies no more,' proclaim perpetual truce to battle." 

Colonel Marshall then reported the following resolutions, 
which were enthusiastically adopted : 

" The oflScers, soldiers, and sailors of the Southern Con- 
federacy, residing in Maryland, who served under Greneral 
Robert E. Lee, desiring to record their grief for his death, 
their admiration for his exalted virtues, and their affectionate 
veneration for his illustrious memory : 

" Resolved^ 1. That leaving with pride the name and fame 
of our illustrious commander to the judgment of history, we, 
who followed him through the trials, dangers, and hardships 
of a sanguinary and protracted war, who have felt the in- 
spiration of his genius and valor in the time of trial, who have 
witnessed his magnanimity and moderation in the hour of vic- 
tory, and his firmness and fortitude in defeat, claim the 
privilege of laying the tribute of our heart-felt sorrow upon 
his honored grave. 

" 2. That the confidence and admiration which his emi- 
nent achievements deserved and received were strengthened 



332 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

by the noble example of liis constancy in adversity, and 
that we honored and revered him in his retirement, as we 
trusted and followed him on the field of battle. 

" 3. That, as a token of our respect and sorrow, we will 
wear the customary badge of mourning for thirty days. 

" 4. That a copy of these resolutions and of the proceed- 
ings of this meeting be transmitted to the family of our 
lamented chief." 

Rev. Thomas U. Dudley then made an eloquent address, 
from a report of which the following extract is taken : 

" Mr. Dudley said he counted himself happy that, though 
almost a stranger in this home of his adoption, he was permit- 
ted to speak as a Confederate soldier to Confederate soldiers 
gathered about the effigy of their leader who is gone, because 
he knew that their hearts beat as his heart. He counted 
himself happy that, by the courtesy of the committee of ar- 
rangements, he was permitted to bring his little flower to 
add to the royal wreath of immortelles they were gathered 
to place on the grave of their father-chieftain who was gone. 

" Yes, they have buried him to-day, brother soldiers, in 
his mountain-home, beneath the church he had builded. Per- 
haps some day a nation shall demand that his dust shall be 
buried near her capital. Perhaps some day the Richmond he 
defended will guard the precious remains. Let him be 
buried there — not on the hill with the Presidents, but 
bury him where the boys lie, that when the grand reveille 
sounds they may behold their chieftain in their midst. For 
that grand reveille will sound, and it is of this that he would 
speak. He came not to speak of him as patriot — for they 
had been told by one who knew and loved him long, who sat 
at his feet as his pupil, the capacity of his great heart to take 
in its embrace all the land he served. He would not speak 
of him as soldier, for they had been just told of the glory 
which he had put upon that flag which poor, puny malice 
would not suffer to be lowered at half-mast in honor of him 
dead. He would not speak of him as soldier to men who 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 333 

had seen under his prescient guidance a handful chase a thou- 
sand; who had seen the marvelous circle of retreat, ever 
keeping the shield of his army between the foe and the city 
he defended. He came to speak of him, not as patriot, but 
as Christian patriot ; not as soldier, but as Cliristian soldier. 
They were building to-night, in their breasts, a monument to 
the dead hero ; patriot and soldier are graven there. He 
came to write Christian above them." 

Mr. Dudley then gave a delineation of his Christian char- 
acter, and concluded as follows : 

" There is left to us, brother soldiers, other than the mourn- 
ful privilege to tell over to our hearts, and to our children, 
the battles, sieges, fortunes, he had passed. There is left to us 
the grand example of God's faithful servant, that we may 
follow. He, being dead, yet speaketh, bidding you, his sol- 
diers, to enlist under this Christian banner. This is his 
command. You did never fail to follow where he led ; you 
did never flinch or falter to do his bidding. This is the com- 
mand he speaks : Enlist and battle for God and Christ, so that, 
when our end shall come, we, too, like him, may ever wrap 
the drapeiy of our couch about us, and lay us down, not to 
dreams, but to the eternal realities which eye hath not seen 
nor ear heard, nor hath entered into the heart of man, but 
which God hath prepared for them that love Him — that we, 
too, may hear, as we trust he has heard, the greeting : 

" Soldier of Christ, well done ! 
Eest from thy loved employ ; 
Thy battle's o'er, thy victory won — 
Enter thy Master's joy 1 " 

Similar meetings were held, and similar expressions of 
grief given, by the soldiers at Louisville, St. Louis, Memphis, 
New Orleans, Galveston, Mobile, Savannah, Atlanta, Charles- 
ton, Raleigh, and, indeed, in wellnigh every city, town, and 
village of the South ; but we have space for only a brief no- 
tice of the great soldiers' meeting in Richmond, which as- 
sembled in response to the following call from General Early : 



334 KEMINISCENOES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

"Lynchburg, Va., October 24, 1870. 
" To the Surviving Officers and Soldiers of the Army of JSforthern Vir- 
ginia. 

" Comrades : The sad tidings of the death ot-etH- ^eat com- 
mander came at a time when, by the interruption of all the 
ordinary modes of traveling, very many of us were debarred the 
privilege of participating in the funeral ceremonies attending 
the burial of him we loved so well, or, by concerted action, of 
giving expression to our feelings on the occasion. While the 
unburied remains of the illustrious hero were yet under the 
affectionate care of friends who were bowed down with a sorrow 
unutterable, the hoarse cry of ' treason ' was croaked from cer- 
tain quarters, for the vile but abortive purpose of casting a stig^ 
ma upon his pure and exalted character. His fame belongs to 
the world and to history, and is beyond the reach of malignity ; 
but a sacred duty devolves upon those whom, in defense of a 
cause he believed to be just, and to which he remained true to 
the latest moment of his life, he led so often to battle, and for 
whom he ever cherished the most affectionate regard — we owe 
it to our fallen comrades, to ourselves, and to posterity, by some 
suitable and lasting memorial, to manifest to the world, for all 
tim6 to come, that we were not unworthy to be led by our im- 
mortal chief, and that we are not now ashamed of the principles 
for which Lee fought and Jackson died. 

'* Already steps have been taken by some Confederate oflBcers 
and soldiers, assembled at Lexington, the place of General 
Lee's death and burial, to inaugurate a memorial association ; 
and being, as I believe, the senior in rank of all officers of the 
Army of Northern Virginia now living in the State, I respect- 
fully suggest and invite a conference at Richmond, on Thurs- 
day, the 3d day of November next, of all the survivors of that 
army, whether officers or privates, and in whatever State they 
may live, who can conveniently attend, for the purpose of pro- 
curing concert of action in regard to the proceeding contem- 
plated. I would also invite to that conference the surviving 
officers and soldiers of all the other Confederate armies, as well 
as the officers, sailors, and marines of the Confederate navy. 

" This call would have been made sooner, but for my absence. 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 



335 



up to this time, in a county where there are no railroads or tele- 
graphs, and where I was detained by imperative duties. 
" Your friend and late fellow-soldier, 

"J. A. Early." 



In response to this call, there was an immense gathering 
of Lee's veterans in a meeting which, for deep feeling and 
warm enthusiasm for its object, has been rarely equaled. 
As indicating the representative character of the meeting, we 
give the following names of gentlemen who served on com- 
mittees : 

On Permanent Organization. 

General William Teery, Bedford, Chairman. 

Major Robert Stiles, Richmond. 

S'g't J. VanLew McCreery, Richmond. 

Corp'l William C. Kean", Jr., Louisa. 

•Lieutenant John E. Roller. Rockingham. 

Lieutenant Henry C. Carter, Richmond. 

General George E. Pickett, Richmond. 

General John R. Cooke, King William. 

General Harry Heth, Baltimore. 

Colonel Thomas H. Carter, King William. 

Colonel H. P. Jones, Hanover. 

Private W. H. Effinger, Rockingham. 

Capt. James William Foster, Leesburg. 

Colonel Thomas L. Preston, Albemarle. 

General William H. Payne, Fauquier. 

Colonel Robert S. Preston, Montgomery. 

Captain W. C. Nicholas, Maryland. 

Colonel William Allan, Lexington. 

Private Abram Warwick, Richmond. 

Major A. R. Venable, Prince Edward. 

Lieutenant Samuel Wilson, Surry, 

Major Ro. W. Hunter, Winchester. 

Lieutenant James Pollard, King William. 

Colonel William Nelson, Hanover. 

Captain R. D. Minor, Richmond. 



336 



REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 



General James H. Lane, 
Colonel W. W. Goedon, 
Hon. William Welsh, 
Captain J. L. Claeke, 



North Carolina. 
New Kent. 
Kent County, Md. 
Baltimore. 



On Resolutions. 



Colonel Charles S. Venable, 
Hon. R T. Banks, 
Major John W. Daniel, 
Lieut. Richard H. Christian, 
Major William H. Caskie, 
General Benjamin Huger, 
General William Mahone, 
General L. L. Lomax, 
George H. Pagels, Esq., 
Colonel Edmund Pendleton, 
Private John A. Elder, 
Com. Matthew F. Maury, 
General George H. Stewart, 
General C. W. Field, 
General W. S. Walker, 
Serg't Leroy S. Edwards, 
Lieut. S. V. SouTHALL, 
Captain J. M. Hudgins, 
Col. William E. Cameron, 
Colonel Willi AIM Watts, 
General Harry Heth, 
Gen. WiLLiAJvi B. Taliaferro, 
General Samuel Jones, 
Private John B. Mordecai, 
Capt. J. McHenry Howard, 
Captain E. Griswold, 
Lieutenant R. C. Jones, 



Albemarle, Chairman, 

Baltimore. 

Lynchburg. 

Richmond. 

Richmond. 

Fauquier. 

Norfolk. 

Fauquier. 

Baltimore. 

Botetourt. 

Richmond. 

Lexington, 

Baltimore. 

Baltimore. 

Georgia. 

Richmond. 

Albemarle. 

Caroline. 

Petersburg. 

Roanoke. 

Baltimore. 

Gloucester. 

Amelia. 

Henrico. 

Baltimore. 

Baltimore. 

Alleghany County, Md. 



Lieuten ant-General J. A. Early was made temporaiy chair- 
man of the meeting, and, in taking the chair, made a char- 
acteristic address, from which we take the following extract : 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 337 

" Friends and Comrades : Wlien the information of the 
death of our illustrious commander was flashed over the tele- 
graphic wires to all parts of the civilized world, good men 
everywhere mourned the loss of him who, in life, was the 
noblest exemplar of his times, of all that is good, and true, 
and great in human nature ; and a cry of anguish was wrung 
from the hearts of all true Confederate soldiers, which was 
equaled only by that which came up from the same hearts 
when the fact was realized that the sword of Robert E. Lee 
was sheathed forever, and that the banner to which his deeds 
had given such lustre was furled amid gloom and disaster. 
After the first burst of grief had subsided, the inquiry arose 
in the breasts of all, What can we do to manifest our esteem 
and veneration for him we loved so well ? It was but neces- 
sary that the suggestion should be made, to elicit an expres- 
sion of the general sentiment. I thought that I could take 
the liberty of making that suggestion to my old comrades, 
and I therefore made the call under which you are here as- 
sembled. Although I made that call as the former senior in 
rank of all the officers of the Anny of Northern Yirgmia, 
now living in the State, I desire to say to you that at the 
tomb of General Lee all distinctions of rank cease. The 
private soldier who, in tattered uniform and with sore and 
bleeding feet, followed the banner upheld by Lee and Jack- 
son, and did not desert his post or skulk in the hour of dan- 
ger, but did his duty faithfully to the end of the war, and is 
now doing his duty by remaining true to the principles for 
which he fought, is the peer of the most renowned in fame 
or exalted in rank among the survivors. He has an equal 
share in the proud heritage left us in the memory of the glori- 
ous deeds and exalted viii:ues of our great chieftain. All 
such I greet and welcome here, as 1 do those of eveiy rank, 
claiming them all as my friends, comrades, and brothers. 

" My friends, if it is expected that I shall on this occa- 
sion deliver a eulogy on General Lee, you will be disap- 
pointed. I have not the language with which to give expres- 
22 



338 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

sion to my estimate of tlie greatness and goodness of his 
character. I will say, however, that, extended as is his fame, 
the world at large has not fully appreciated the transcendent 
abilities of General Lee, nor realized the perfection of his 
character. 'No one who has not witnessed the affectionate 
kindness and gentleness, and often playfulness, of his manners 
in private, his great self-control and dignity -in dealing with 
important public affairs, the exhibition of his high and un- 
yielding sense of duty on all occasions, and the majestic 
grandeur of his action and appearance in the shock of battle, 
can form more than an approximate estimate of his real 
character." 

The following permanent officers were elected : 

President. 
Hon. Jefferson Davis. 

Vice-Presidents. 

Maj.-Gen'I John B. Gordon. Major-General Firz Lee. 

Maj.-Gen'l Edward Johnson. Colonel Henry Peyton. 

Maj.-Gen'I J. R. Trimble. Colonel J. L. French. 

Maj.-Gen'l W. B. Tajliaferro. Colonel Robert E. Withers. 

Brig.-Gen'l Wm. N. Pendleton. Major Wm. N. Berkeley. 

Maj.-Gen'I William Smith. Colonel William Willis. 

Brig.-Gen'l J. D. Imboden. Col. Wm. Preston Johnson. 

Colonel Charles Marshall. Captain Mann Page. 

Colonel Walter H. Taylor. Corporal William C. Kean. 

Colonel W. K. Perrin. Private Robert Martin, 
Colonel Peyton N. Wise. " G. Hough. 

General M. Ransom. " G. Elder. 

Captain Robert Pegram. Serg't W. Wirt Robinson. 
General L. L. Lomax. 

Secretaries. 
Captain E, S. Gregory. Private Abner Anderson. 

Sergeant George L. Christian. Captain Thos. D. Houston. 
Captain C. G. Lawson. Captain George Walker. 

Sergeant James P. Cowardin. Major William B. Myers. 
Captain W. A. Anderson. 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 339 

The advance of Mr. Davis to the platform was greeted 
with a burst of irrepressible enthusiasm, which plainly 
showed that he still had a warm place in the hearts of his 
old soldiers. His address (from which we have quoted in a 
previous chapter, and now give the following extracts) 
thrilled every heart, and elicited the most unbounded ex- 
pressions of approbation. Jeffeeson Davis's tribute to 
Robert E. Lee will always deserve a place on the page of 
histoiy. He began by saying : 

" Soldiers and Sailors of the Confederacy, Countrymen 
and' Friends : Assembled on this sad occasion, with hearts 
oppressed with the grief that follows the loss of him who 
was our leader on many a bloody battle-field, there is a melan- 
choly pleasure in the spectacle which is presented. Hitherto, 
in all times, men have been honored when successful ; but 
here is the case of one who, amid disaster, went down to his 
grave, and those who were his companions in misfortune 
have assembled to honor his memory. It is as much an 
honor to you who give as to him who receives, for above the 
vulgar test of merit you show yourselves competent to dis- 
criminate between him who enjoys and him who deserves 
success. 

" Robert E. Lee was my associate and friend in the Mili- 
tary Academy, and we were friends until the hour of his 
death. "We were associates and friends when he was a sol- 
dier and I a Congressman ; and associates and friends when 
he led the armies of the Confederacy and I held civil office, 
and therefore I may claim to speak as one who knew him. 
In the many sad scenes and perilous circumstances through 
which we passed together, our conferences were frequent 
and full, yet never was there an occasion on which there was 
not entire harmony of purpose and accordance as to means. 
If ever there was difference of opinion, it was dissipated by 
discussion, and harmony was the result. I repeat, we never 
disagreed, and I may add that I never in my life saw in him 
the slightest tendency to self-seeking. It was not his to 



340 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

make a record, it was not Lis to shift blame to otlier shoul- 
ders ; but it was bis with an eye fixed upon the welfare of 
bis country, never faltering, to follow tbe line of duty to tbe 
end. His was tbe beart tbat braved every difiiculty ; bis 
was tbe mind tbat wrougbt victory out of defeat. 

" He bas been charged with ' want of dash.' I wish to 
say tbat I never knew Lee to decline to attempt any thing 
man might dare." 

He then gave tbe incidents quoted in a previous chapter, 
defended General Lee in bis conduct of tbe Gettysburg and 
other campaigns, and continued as follows : 

" I shall not attempt to review the military career of our 
deceased chieftain. Of the man, how shall I speak? He 
was my friend, and in that word is included all tbat I could 
say of any man. His moral qualities rose to tbe height of 
bis genius. Self-denying — always intent upon tbe one idea 
of duty — self-controlled to an extent that many thought him 
cold — bis feelings were really warm, and bis beart melted 
readily at tbe sufferings of tbe widow and tbe oi-pban, and 
bis eye rested with mournful tenderness upon the wounded 
soldier. During the war he was ever conscious of tbe in- 
sufiiciency of tbe means at his control ; but it was never bis 
to complain or to utter a doubt — it was always bis to do. 
When in the last campaign be was beleaguered at Petersburg, 
and painfully aware of the straits to which we were reduced, 
he said, ' With my army in tbe mountains of Virginia I 
could carry on this war for twenty years longer.' His army 
greatly diminished, bis transportation deficient, be could only 
hope to protract the defense until the roads should become 
firm enouo;h to enable him to retire. An untoward event 
caused him to anticipate the movement, and tbe Army of 
Northern Virginia was overwhelmed. But in the surrender 
lie trusted to conditions tbat have not been fulfilled : he 
expected bis army to be respected and his paroled soldiers to 
be allowed tbe peaceful enjoyment of civil rights and prop- 
erty. Whether these conditions have been fulfilled, I leave it 
to others to determine. 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 3^1 

" Here he now sleeps in the land he loved so well, and 
that land is not Virginia only, for they do injustice to Lee 
who believe he fought only for Virginia. He was ready to 
go anywhere, on any service for the good of his country, 
and his heart was as hroad as the ffteen States struggling 
for the prindjyles that our forefathers fought for in the 
Revolution of 1776. He sleeps with the thousands who 
fought under the same flag — and happiest they who first of- 
fered up their lives ! — he sleeps in the soil to him and to them 
most dear. That flag was furled when there was none to 
bear it. Around it we are assembled, a remnant of the liv- 
ing, to do honor to his memory, and there is an army of 
skeleton sentinels to keep watch above his grave. This good 
citizen, this gallant soldier, this great general, this true patriot, 
had yet a higher praise than this or these — he was a true 
Christian. The Christianity which ennobled his life gives to 
us the consolatory belief that he is- happy beyond the grave. 

" But, while we mourn the loss of the great and the true, 
drop we also tears of sympathy with her who was a help- 
meet to him — the noble woman who, while her husband was 
in the field leading the army of the Confederacy, though 
an invalid' herself, passed the time in knitting socks for the 
marching soldiers ! A woman fit to be the n^other of heroes, 
and heroes are descended from her. Moimiing with her, we 
can only offer the consolations of the Christian. Our loss is 
not his, but he now enjoys the rewards of a life well spent, 
and a never wavering trust in a risen Saviour. This day we 
unite our words of sorrow with those of the good and great 
tlu'oughout Christendom, for his fame is gone over the 
water — his deeds will be remembered ; and, when the monu- 
ment we build shall have crumbled into dust, his virtues will 
still live, a high model for the imitation of generations 
yet unborn." 

Colonel Charles S. Venable, of the University of Vir- 
ginia, then presented the appropriate resolutions, which were 
enthu'siastically adopted by the meeting, and made the elo- 



342 KEMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

quent address from wliicli we have quoted in a previous 
chapter. 

General John S. Preston, of South Carolina, then made 
an eloquent address, from which we make the following ex- 
tract : 

" Mr. President and Comrades of the Army of tlte Con- 
federate States : There was a time when, with wicked and 
impatient infidelity, I feared it was not a kind Providence 
which permitted men with gray beards to survive our war. 
But, having seen Robert Lee live as righteously as he fought 
gloriously, and that we are now spared to the holy duty of 
honoring his memory and perpetuating his faith, I recant 
the heresy, and meekly wait the way of the Lord ; and am 
grateful for that consideration which calls me to appear in 
this stately procession. Yet I scarcely dare to brin-g my 
little blade of grass to lay upon a grave already glittering 
with tears and pearls, flowing from the eyes and hearts of a 
mourning world. On no occasion of my life have I been 
so utterly unable to tell the feelings of my heart, or the 
crowding thoughts which come rushing on my brain. But, 
comrades, we are not here to find rhetorical forms, modes, 
and shows of grief, not even to speak singly, but all together, 
as in these complete resolutions, with one tongue, one heart, 
in the simplest words of our language, to join our grief and 
our honor. 

" As a Yirginian, as a Confederate, as a man, as a friend, 
I am overwhelmed with the emotions which emanate from 
all these attributes of my being. Standing here before the 
most illustrious and the bravest living, I feel as if I were in 
the very presence of the greatest dead who has died in my 
generation — of him to whom my spirit bowed as to the 
anointed champion of the purest human faith I have ever 
cherished — of him who, by his great deeds, by his pure 
life, by his humble faith in the meek and lowly Jesus, has 
justified to the world, and is now pleading with a God of 
truth for, that cause which made him the most illustrious 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 343 

living: man and tlie most mourned of all the dead who have 
died in his generation. It was the greatness of his cause, 
and the purity of his faith in that cause, which made Robert 
Lee great, for we who know him best do know that Rob- 
ert Lee could never have achieved greatness in an ignoble 
cause, or under an impure faith. God gave him to us, to 
sanctify our faith, and to show us and the world that, 
although we might fail, his chosen servant had made that 
cause forever holy." 

General Preston was followed by General John B. Gor- 
don, of Georgia, who spoke as follows : 

" Mr. Chairman^ Ladies^ and Fellow-Soldiers : If per- 
mitted to indulge the sensibilities of my nature, I would 
gladly have fled the performance of this most honorable 
task your kindness has imposed, and in silence to-night have 
contemplated the virtues of the great and good man whose 
loss we so deplore. I loved General Lee, for it was my proud 
privilege to have known him well. I loved him with a pro- 
found and filial awe — a sincere and unfeigned affection. 
We all loved him, and it is not a matter of sui-prise that the 
sons and daughters of Yirginia should contend for that 
sweetest of all privileges now left us — to keep special watch 
over his grave. 

" But where his remains shall lie is not the subject we are 
here to consider. We are met to provide, as suggested by 
the resolutions, for the erection of a monument in honor of 
our great captain. Honor, did I say ? Honor General Lee ! 
How vain ! what utter mockery do these words seem ! 
Honor Lee ! Why, my friends, his deeds have honored 
him. The very trump of Fame is proud to honor him. 
Europe and the civilized world have honored him supremely, 
and history itself will catch the echo and make it immortal. 
Honor Lee ! Why, sir, the sad news of his death, as it was 
borne to the world, carried a pang even to the hearts of mar- 
shals and of monarchs; and I can easily fancy that, amid 
the din, and clash, and carnage of battle, the camion, in tran- 



344 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

sient pause at the whispered news, briefly ceased its roar 
arouud the walls of Paris. 

" The brief time it would be proper for me to occupy to- 
night is altogether insufficient to analyze the elements which 
made him great. But I wish to say that it has been my for- 
tune in life to have come in 'contact with some whom the 
world pronounced great ; but of no man whom it has ever 
been my fortune to meet can it be so truthfully said, as of 
Lee, that, grand as might be your conceptions of the man 
before, he arose in incomparable majesty on more familiar 
acquaintance. This can be affirmed of few men who have 
ever lived or died, and of no other man whom it has been 
my fortune to approach. Like Niagara, the more you gazed 
the more its grandeur grew upon you, the more its majesty 
expanded and filled your spirit with a full satisfaction, that 
left a perfect delight without the slightest feeling of oppres- 
sion. Grandly majestic and dignified in all his deportment, 
he was genial as the sunlight of May, and not a ray of that 
cordial, social intercourse but brought warmth to the heart, 
as it did light to the understanding." 

General Gordon then gave the discussion of General Lee's 
military career, which is quoted in a previous chapter, and 
proceeded as follows : 

" General Lee is known to the world only as a military 
man, but it is easy to divme from his history how mindful 
of all just authority, how observant of all constitutional 
restrictions would have been his career as a civilian. When, 
near the conclusion of the war, darkness was thickening 
about the falling fortunes of the Confederacy, when its very 
life was in the sword of Lee, it was my proud privilege to 
note, with special admiration, the modest demeanor, the 
manly decorum, and the respectful homage, which marked 
all his intercourse with the constituted authorities of his 
country. Clothed ^\^th all power, he hid its every symbol 
behind a genial modesty, and refused to exert it save in obe- 
dience to law. And even in his triumphant entry into the 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 345 

territory of the enemy, so regardful was lie of civilized war- 
fare, that the observance of his general orders as to private 
property and private rights left the line of his march marked 
and marred by no devastated fields, charred ruins, or deso- 
lated homes. 

" But it is his private character, or rather, I sliould say 
his personal emotion and virtues, which his coimtrymen will 
most delight to consider and dwell upon. His magnanimity, 
transcending all historic precedents, seemed to form a new 
chapter in the book of humanity. Witness that letter to 
Jackson, after his woimds at Chancellorsville, in which he 
said, 'I am praying for you with more fervor than I ever 
prayed for myself ; ' and that otlier, more disinterested and 
pathetic, ' I could for the good of my country wish that the 
wounds which you have received had been inflicted upon my 
own body ; ' or that of the later message, ' Say to General 
Jackson that his wounds are not so severe as mine, for he 
loses but his left arm, while I, in him, lose my right ; ' or 
that other expression of unequaled magnanimity in which 
he ascribed the glory of their joint victory to the sole credit 
of tlie dying hero. Did I say unequaled? Yes, that was 
an avowal of unequaled magnanimity, until it met its paral- 
lel in his own grander self-negation, in assuming the sole 
responsibility for the failure at Gettysburg. Ay, my coun- 
trymen, Alexander had his Artela, Csesar his Pharsalia, Na- 
poleon his Austerlitz, but it was reserved for Lee to grow 
grander and more illustrious in defeat than ever in victory — 
grander, because in defeat he showed a spirit grander than 
victory, the heroism of battles, or all the achievements of the 
war — a spirit which crowns him with a chaplet greener far 
than ever mighty conqueror wore. 

" I turn me now to that last closing scene at Appomat- 
tox, and draw thence a picture of this man as he laid aside 
the sword of the unrivaled soldier, to become the most ex- 
emplary of citizens. 

"I can never forget the deferential homage paid this 



346 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

great captain by even the Federal soldiery, as with uncovered 
heads they contemplated in mute admiration this now cap- 
tive hero, as he rode through their ranks. Impressed for- 
ever, daguerreotyped on my heart, is that last parting scene 
with the handful of heroes still crowding around him. Few, 
indeed, were the words then spoken, but the quivering lip 
and the tearful eye told of the love they bore him, in sym- 
phonies more eloquent than any language can describe. Can 
I ever forget? No, never, never, can I forget the words 
which fell from his lips as I rode beside him amid the de- 
jected and weeping soldiery, when turning to me he said, ' I 
could wish that I were numbered among the fallen in the 
last battle ; ' and oh ! as he thought of the loss of the cause — 
of the many dead scattered over so many fields, who sleeping 
neglected, with no governmental arms to gather up their 
remains, sleeping isolated and alone beneath the tearful 
stars, with naught but their soldier-blankets about them; 
oh ! as these emotions swept over his great soul, he felt that 
he would fain have laid him down to rest in the same grave 
where lies buried the common hope of his people. But 
Providence willed it otherwise. He rests now forever, my 
countrymen, his spirit in the bosom of that Father whom he 
so faithfully served, his body in the Yalley, surrounded by 
the mountains of his native State — mountains the autumnal 
glories of whose magnificent* forests now seem but habili- 
ments of mourning — in the Yalley, the pearly dew-drops on 
whose grass and flowers seem but tears of sadness : 

' No sound shall awake him to glory again.' 

"Ko more shall he lead his invincible lines to victory. 
No more shall we gaze upon him, and draw from his quiet 
demeanor lessons of life. But oh ! it is a sweet consolation 
to us, who loved him, that no more shall his bright spirit be 
bowed down to the earth with the burden of his people's 
wrongs. It is sweet consolation to us that this last victory. 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 347 

tlirougli faith in his crucified Redeemer, is the most tran- 
scendentlj glorious of all his triumphs. 

" It is meet that we should build to his memory a monu- 
ment here ; here in this devoted city ; here on these classic 
hills — a monument as enduring as their granite foundations 
— ^here beside the river, whose banks are ever memorable, 
and whose waters are vocal with the glories of his triumphs. 

" Here let the monument stand, as a testunonial to all 
peoples, and countries, and ages, of our appreciation of the 
man who, in all the aspects of his career, and character, and 
attainments — as a great captain, ranking among the first of 
any age ; as a patriot, whose self-sacrificing devotion to his 
country renders him the peer of Washington ; as a Chris- 
tian like Havelock, recognizing his duty to his God above 
every other consideration ; with a native modesty which re- 
fused to appropriate a glory all his own, and wliich sur- 
rounds with a halo of light his whole career and character ; 
with a fidelity to principle which no misfortunes could shake ; 
with an integrity of life and sacred reverence for truth which 
no man can dare to assail — must ever stand peerless among 
men in the estimation of Christendom." 

Colonel Charles Marshall next delivered the following ad- 
dress, which we give in full, as beautifully illustrating the 
influence of General Lee over his disbanded soldiers, as well 
as their warm affection for him, and ardent desire to honor 
his memoiy : 

" Nothing but an earnest desire to do all in my power to 
promote the object of our meeting to-night induces me to 
occupy this stand. I feel my unfitness to address those who 
have listened to men whose names, I may say, without flat- 
tery, are historic — whose valor and constancy deserved and 
enjoyed the confidence of our great leader. More especially 
am I unworthy to stand where just now he stood, who — amid 
all the cares and trials of the eventful period during which 
he guided the destinies of the Confederacy; amid all the 
dangers and difficulties that surrounded him; amid all the 



348 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

vicissitudes of victory and disaster — always and on all occa- 
sions, gave tlie aid of his eminent abilities, his unfaltering 
coui'age, and his pure patriotism, to our illustrious chief. 

" But, on behalf of those who are with me to-night from 
Maryland, I desire to say a few words in support of the reso- 
lutions of the committee. 

" These resolutions require that a monument shall be 
erected, and that it shall be erected in Richmond. 

" In both propositions we most heartily concur. 

" We are assembled, not to provide for the erection of a 
tombstone on which to write, ' Here lies Robebt E. Lee,' 
but to rear a cloud-piercing monument which shall tell to 
coming generations, 

'HEEE LIVED ROBERT E. LEE.' 

" We desire something worthy to transmit the lesson of 
his example, and of our undying love, to posterity ; and to 
this end we invoke the aid not only of those who followed 
the flashing of his stainless sword, but of all who reverence 
the memory of his spotless life. We wish to concentrate all 
efforts upon the attainment of this great end, not that we 
may honor him, but that we may preserve, for the good of 
all mankind, the memory of his achievements, and the teach- 
ing of his example. 

" And it is eminently proper that such a monument 
should be erected in Richmond. 

" Here was the scene of his greatest labors and his great- 
est triumphs. In defense of this city he displayed those 
great qualities which have given him the lofty position as- 
signed him by the unanimous voice of his time, and secured 
for him the love, the gratitude, and the affectionate venera- 
tion of the people for whose liberties he fought. 

" All his campaigns, all the battles, whether among the 
hills of Pennsylvania and Maryland, or upon the banks of 
the Chickahominy and the Appomattox, had for their great 
object the protection of Richmond. 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 349 

" Here lie buried tlie dead of every State from Maryland 
to Texas, and to this spot, to Hollywood, tlie hearts of wives, 
of mothers, and of sisters, from the banks of the Potomac 
to those of the Eio Grande, are ever sadly but proudly 
turning. 

" No other place in the South unites so entirely the sym- 
pathies and affections of her people. 

" To raise his monument here within sight of the fields 
on which he won his fame, and among the graves of those 
who were faithful to him unto death, seems to us, therefore, 
to be most appropriate. We do not propose now to say what 
that monument shall be, but to adopt measures which will 
enable us to invite the taste, the cultivation, and the genius 
of our age to compete in furnishing a suitable design. 

" And we hope to find some one who can rise to the 
height of the great argument, grasping the subject, realizing 
the character and achievements of our leader, feeling the 
love, the gratitude, the veneration of our people, and, group- 
ing all around this hallowed spot, write in one enduring 
word the story of General Lee, his army, and his country. 

" There is one other reason why we should erect a monu- 
ment, and why we should erect it here. It is that we may 
perpetuate for our guidance the lesson taught by his example 
when war was done, and all his efforts had ended in failure. 
Ill that lesson, the whole country has an immediate interest. 
History presents no parallel to the sudden cessation of re- 
sistance on the part of the Southern people after the surren- 
der at Appomattox. In a few short weeks, where armies 
had but lately confronted each other, peace was fully re- 
stored, and not an armed Southron could be found within 

our borders. 

' It seemed as if their mother earth 
Had swallowed up her warlike hirth.' 

" The Federal Government manifested its confidence in 
the pledges made by the soldiers and people of the Confed- 
eracy, by sending companies and regiments, to control those 



350 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

before wliom coi-ps and armies had fled. That government 
knew well that the handful of troops sent ostensibly to over- 
awe the South could repose secm-ely upon that honor which 
they insulted by their presence. 

" And in that confidence, shame be it said, wrongs were 
inflicted upon our people, which, we have the authority of 
unquestioned loyalty for saying, ought not to be meekly 
borne by men of English blood. 

" But the Federal Government knew that the Southern 
people looked for guidance to their leaders, and that, fore- 
most among those leaders, they looked to General Lee. He 
had given the pledge of his honor, and his people regarded 
his honor as their own. 

" Relying upon his influence with his countrymen, and 
knowing that his influence would be exerted to secm-e the 
most perfect compliance with the terms of his surrender, 
the dominant party in the ]N"orth entered upon a course of 
systematic oppression and insult which would have justified 
him in renouncing the obhgations of the terms made at Ap- 
pomattox. 

" But his word was given, and nothing could change it. 
The dastardly wrongs inflicted upon his people could break 
and did break his great heart, but could not make him 
swerve from his truth. He bore all in silence until he 
died, and his people looked upon him and gathered strength 
to bear. 

" New outrages upon our Hberties and rights, new in- 
sults to our honor, may tempt us sometimes to forget that 
our hands no longer hold the sabre or the rifle. To whom 
shall we turn for that strength which will enable us to keep 
faith with the faithless ? 

" "We can no longer see the noble example which he set 
before us, but, that we may not err from the path in which 
he trod, let us here, at the place toward which the eyes and 
hearts of all our people turn, rear a monument, to which, 
when tempted to resist, we may look, and learn afresh the 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 351 

lesson of that sublime patience which he illustrated, and 
which, my fellow-soldiers and countrymen, be assured, will, 
like the anvil, wear out many hammers." 

General Henry A. Wise (ex-Governor of Yirginia) then 
made a characteristic address, from which we make the fol- 
lowing extract : 

" Mr. President cmd Comrades of the Confederacy : I 
cannot trust the fullness of my heart at the moment of this 
meeting to prompt my lips with the words becoming the 
bier of General Eobert E. Lee, whose death has called to- 
gether some of his surviving comrades. 

"It is no occasion for any sketch of biography or hi&- 
tory ; eulogy upon his life and death is vain ; his character 
excels all praise ; his merits need not to be disclosed, and his 
faults had no ' dread abodes',' for they all leaned to virtue's 
side. Whatever faults he had, and whatever blame belonged 
to him, no friend or foe could point them out half as readily 
as his truthful ingenuousness would admit and mourn them. 
He was swifter than the accuser to accuse himself, and ever 
generous to the faults of others ; he was ever foremost to 
acknowledge his own. If nothing is to be said of the dead 
but what is good, there is a superabundance of good in his 
life and death to compose volumes for the instruction of 
mankind. He is departed and gone to his Father, but it 
cannot be said of him that he is ' no more.' His fame is 
left to earth for all time — his great and good soul is in 
heaven for all eternity ; and from his example proceed a 
moral power and divine force which all the arms of earth 
and powers of darkness cannot subdue, a wisdom and virtue 
which shall hover over the land he loved, and spread it with 
the fruits of righteousness and truth. That is enough to be 
said of him, and it is left for us to cherish his memory, and 
keep the legacies of lessons he taught. 

" The first fruit of his demise is the happy result of 
bringing us together, for the first time since he gave up the 
sword, which he accepted with the pledge to devote it to the 



352 KEMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

gods and the altars of bis home, and to slieatlie it only when 
his work was finished. He sheathed it not until his whole 
dutj was discharged and his work was done. He made ns 
honor, love, and confide in him, and taught us how to de- 
serve the honor, love, and confidence of each other ; and I 
pray you now to form a brotherhood in peace which shall 
pei"petuate our comradeship in war, worthy of the armies of 
the Confederacy and of their illustrious chief." 

The next speaker was Colonel "Wm. Preston Johnston 
(son of General Albert Sidney Johnston), of Washington and 
Lee University, who opened his address as follows : 

^^ Mr. President and Fellow-Soldiers: A few minutes 
since, I was informed that I was expected to addi-ess you. 
This unexpected honor greatly embarrasses me, tired with 
two days' travel, just o£E the cars, and physically imfit to ap- 
pear before you. It would ill become me, moreover, to follow 
with any elaborate attempt the golden -mouthed orator of 
Virginia, or to utter panegyric after him whose lightest word 
makes history ; and who, while he stood at the head of the 
Confederacy, never failed to cheer his chosen captain with 
counsel and comfort, or to uphold his arm in the hour of bat- 
tle with all the force at his command. It would ill become 
me here, surrounded by the soldiers who shared in the glo- 
ries of Lee, and after the speeches of his trusted military 
friends and of his great lieutenants, who rode down with 
him to battle, to paint again the meridian splendor of his 
great campaigns. But, if you are willing to listen to some 
brief passages of his latter life, I will not detain you long. 

" It was my fortune after the war to be called from my 
distant home in Kentucky by a request which, in the mouth 
of General Lee, was to me equivalent to a command. For 
four years I have watched with reverential affection the final 
scenes of that life, so magnificent in achievements and then 
so beautiful toward its end. When he had gone down 
through the bitter waters of Appomattox from the martial 
glories of the war to the quiet of civic pursuits, that life, al- 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 353 

ways consecrated to duty, was rounded to a perfect close. 
Turning liis face to tlie desolated land for which he had done 
and suffered so much, he stretched forth his hand to stanch 
the wounds he had been unable to avert, and that hand will- 
ingly did the work it found to do. As President of Wash- 
ing College, teaching the sons of his soldiers by precept and 
example, he presented to the world the noble spectacle of 
one who could take up the several threads of a career, broken 
by disaster, and bind them in all their former strength and 
usefulness. Here in the sunset of his days shone forth his ex- 
alted worth, the wonderful tenderness of his nature, and the 
dignity and composure of his soul. As an illustration of some 
of these qualities, I may mention that the last hours of his 
active life were spent in a vestry-meeting, where I was pres- 
ent, and that he there evinced great solicitude that the vet- 
eran soldier of the Cross, who served as his minister, should 
be secure of a decent maintenance, and that the house of 
God where he worshiped should be a not unworthy temple 
to his name. Tet, even there, he passed the few minutes 
preceding the meeting in smoothing away the asperities 
springing from differences of opinion, with playful anecdote 
and pleasant reminiscence of that saintly servant of God, 
Bishop Meade, and that noble pillar of constitutional jm'is- 
pnidence, Chief-Justice Marshall. 

" Fifteen minutes after we parted from him he was strick- 
en with his last illness, and during this it was sometimes my 
sad duty to minister to his needs. I feel that, in an assembly 
where every heart throbs with sorrow for our departed chief- 
tain, I violate no confidence by adverting to a death-bed 
every way worthy of the life it ended. Once in the solemn 
watches of the night, when I handed him the prescribed 
nourishment, he turned upon me a look of friendly recogni- 
tion, and then cast down his eyes with such a sadness in 
them, that I can never forget it. But he spoke not a word ; 
and this not because he was unable, for, when he chose, he 
did speak brief sentences with distinct enunciation, but be- 
23 



354 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

cause, before friends or family or physicians feared the im- 
pending stroke, he saw the open portals of death and chose 
to wrap himself in an unbroken silence as he went down to 
enter them. He, against whom no man could charge, in a 
long life, a word that should not have been spoken, chose to 
leave the deeds of that life to speak for him. To me, this 
woful silence, this voiceless majesty, was the grandest feat- 
ure of that grand death. ..." 

The closing address was made by Colonel R. E. Withers 
(since Lieutenant-Governor of Yirginia, and United States 
Senator-elect), and was as follows : 

" Mr. President and Comrades : After the gorgeous of- 
ferings, which, in such rich profusion, have been laid in 
votive heaps on the tomb of our departed hero, it is perhaps 
but meet that I should appear bearing the feeble tribute of 
my love, and with respectful reverence place the modest 
chaplet on the same holy shrine ; for I stand before you the 
representative of the mass of officers and men of his com- 
mand. It was to have been expected that the companions of 
his earlier years, and the friends of his later manhood — that 
those endeared by the sweets of daily social intercourse, and, 
yet more, those trusted heroes who launched with red right 
hand the bolts of his admirable strategy upon the fore-front 
of the enemy — ^that these should give utterance to feelings 
of high appreciation, of profound admiration, of reverential 
regard. But I can lay claim to no such enviable intimacy. 
My personal intercourse with General Lee was infrequent ; 
yet I, in common with every ragged and dust-begrimed 
soldier who followed his banner, loved him with deepest 
devotion. And why was this the predominant sentiment of 
his soldiery ? The answer is obvious : Because he loved his 
men. His military achievements may have been rivaled, 
possibly surpassed, by other great commanders. Alexander, 
Marlborough, Wellington, Napoleon, each and all excited 
the admiration, enjoyed the confidence, and aroused the en- 
thusiasm of their soldiers ; but none of these were loved as 
Lee was loved. 



MUTUAL LOVE OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS. 355 

" They considered tlieir soldiers as mere machines pre- 
pared to perform a certain part in tlie great drama of the 
battle-field. They regarded not the question of human life 
as a controlling element in their calculations ; with unmoved 
eye and unquickened pulse, they hurled their solid columns 
against the very face of destruction, without reck or care for 
the destruction of life involved. But General Lee never for- 
got that his men were fellow-beings as well as soldiers. He 
cared for them with parental solicitude, nor ever relaxed in 
his efforts to promote their comfort and protect their lives. 
A striking exemplification of this trait can be found in the 
fact that it was his constant habit to turn over to the sick 
and wounded soldiers in the hospital such dehcate viands as 
the partiality of friends furnished for his personal consump- 
tion, preferring for himself the plain fare of the camp, that 
his sick soldiers might enjoy the unwonted luxuries. These 
facts were well known throughout the army ; and hence his 
soldiery, though often ragged and emaciated, though suffer- 
ing from privations, and cold, and nakedness, never faltered 
in their devotion, or abated one tittle of their love for him. 
They knew it was not his fault. 

" Of the indignities and injuries inflicted on General Lee 
and his countrymen it becomes us not now to speak. I have 
no resentful feelings toward those who met us in manly con- 
flict, but the atrocities perpetrated since the war upon a de- 
fenseless people arouse such a storm of passionate remem- 
brance as neither the solemnity of the occasion nor the 
sanctity of the place will suffice to quell. I can only raise 
my eyes to Lee's God, and pray for grace to forgive as I 
hope to be forgiven. 

" The resolutions proposed by the committee meet with 
my hearty approval. Monumental rewards are but the ex- 
pression of a nation's gratitude for distinguished service, and 
reverence for the mighty dead. They are not designed to do 
honor to the dead, but mark the respect and love of the liv- 
ing; and surely no one has commanded such respect and 



35G REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

gratitude, or excited siicli love, as our late commander. 
Whether the monument be reared in Richmond or in Lex- 
ington — whether it casts its shadows over the rushing waters 
of the James, or bathes its summit in the pure air of the 
mountains, amid which his parting spirit took its upward 
flight — it will cause all who gaze upon it to feel their hearts 
more pure, their gratitude more warm, their sense of duty- 
more exalted, and their love of country touched by a holier 
flame. But neither classic bust, nor monumental marble, 
nor lofty cenotaph, nor stately urn, nor enduring bronze, nor 
everlasting granite, can add to his glory in this land he loved 
so well — for here 

' The meanest rill, the mightiest river, 
Roll mingling with his fame forever.' " 

The eloquent addresses delivered at this grand meeting 
were listened to by the soldiers present with rapt attention 
and mingled emotions. IS'ow they would cheer to the echo 
some fitting tribute to their great leader, and anon the start- 
ing tear and deep emotion of these bronzed veterans of a 
hundred fields would attest their deep grief at his loss. It 
was an occasion which none present can ever forget, and well 
expressed the sentiments which the soldiers of Lee univer- 
sally cherish for their great commander. 




-QiL.L'ec: io'M85! 



CHAPTEE X. 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 



It will not do to follow to their homes or trace the do- 
mestic lives of many of the world's " heroes." Thej shiue 
before the public gaze, but are very unlovely in their domes- 
tic relations. ITot so with this great man. Those virtues 
which were so admired by the public were all the more con- 
spicuous in the home circle, and his private character was as 
stainless as it was unassailed by the breath of shmder. 

It will be pleasant to read a sketch of his family as given 
by himself in the following letter : 

" Lexington, Va., November 20, 1865. 

" My dear Sir : I received by the last mail your letter of 
the 13th inst., inquiring into my family history. 

" I am a poor genealogist, and my family records have been 
destroyed or are beyond my reach. But, as j'ou ' insist ' on my 
furnishing the information asked for, and desire it for your ' own 
private use,' I will endeavor to give you a general account. I 
am the youngest son of Henry Lee, of the Revolutionary War, 
who commanded Lee's Legion under General Greene in the 
Southern Department of the United States, and was born at 
Stratford, on the Potomac, Westmoreland County, Virginia, the 
19th of January, 1807. 

" My mother was Anne Hill Carter, daughter of Mr. Charles 
Carter, of Shirley, on James River. My father was twice mar- 
ried, first to Miss Lee, and then to Miss Carter. 'Major Henry 



358 REMTS'ISCEXCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

Lee,' of the TTar of 181"2, of whom you inquire, was the only 
son of the first marriage, and consequently my half-brother. 
' Charles Carter Lee,' of whon* you also ask, and Sidney Smith 
Lee, are my full brothers. I had two sisters, Mrs. Anne R. Mar- 
shall and Mrs. C. Mildred Childe, neither of whom is living'. 
The first left one son, Colonel Louis H. Marshall, of the United 
States Army, and the second a son and daughter, who reside in 
Europe. ' General Fitzhugh Lee ' is the eldest son of my sec- 
ond brother, Sidney Smith Lee, who has five other sons. My 
eldest brother, Charles Carter Lee, has also six children, the 
oldest of whom, George, is about eighteen years old. I have 
three sons, Custis, William H. Fitzhugh, and Robert, and three 
daughters, Mary, Agnes, and Mildred, My father died in 1818, 
my mother in 1829. My grandfather was Henry Lee, of Stafi"ord 
County, Virginia ; my great-grandfather Henry Lee, son of Rich- 
ard Lee, who first came from England to America, and from 
whom the Southern Lees are descended. Richard Henry, Ar- 
thur, and Francis Lightfoot Lee, of the Revolution, were cousins 
of my father. ' John Fitzgerald Lee,' whom you mention, is the 
grandson of Richard Henry Lee. I believe I have answered aU 
your questions, and must now express the pleasure I feel in 
learning that yoiu" ancestors were fellow-soldiers with mine in 
the great war of the Revolution. This hereditary bond of amity 
has caused me, at the risk of being tedious, to make to you the 
foregoing family narrative. I am also led by the same and other 
feelings to grieve with you at the death of your brave nephews 
who fell in the recent war. May their loss be sanctified to you 
and to their country ! 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

" R. E. Lee." 

An extract from a review of a recently-published book 
from the graceful pen of the gifted author Paul H. H^ajne 
may be appropriately inserted at this point : 

" A scene witnessed by us at Fort Sumter, on a spring 
afternoon of 1861, comes vi\adly back to memory. Lean- 
ing against a great Columbiad which occupied an upper tier 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 359 

of tlie fortress, vre were engaged in watching the sunset 
when Toices and footsteps toward tiie right attracted our 
notice. 

'•' Glancing round we saw approaching us the then com- 
mander of the fort, accompanied by several of his captains 
and lieutenants; and, in the middle of the group, topping 
the tallest by haK a head, was, perhaps, the most striking fig- 
ure we had ever encountered, the figure of a man seemingly 
about fifty-six or fifty-eight years of age, erect as a poplar, 
yet lithe and graceful, with broad shoulders well thrown 
back, a fine, justly-proportioned head jyosed in unconscious 
dignity, clear, deep, thoughtful eje^:^ and the quiet, daunt- 
less step of one every inch the gentleman and soldier. 

" Had some old English cathedral crypt or monumental 
stone in "Westminster Abbey been smitten by a magician's , 
wand and made to yield up its knightly tenant restored to 
his manly vigor, with a chivalric soul beaming from every 
feature, some gi-and old crusader or ' red-cross ' warrior who, 
believing in a sacred creed and espousing a glorious principle, 
looked upon mere life as nothing in the comparison, we 
thought that thus would he have appeared, tmchanged in 
aught but costume and stirroundings ! And this superb sol- 
dier, the glamour of the antique days about him, was no 
other than Robert E. Lee, just commissioned by the Presi- 
dent, after his unfortunate campaign in Western Virginia, to 
travel southward and examine the condition of our coast for- 
tifications and seaboard defenses in generaL . . . 

" Few chapters in the volume before us are more interest>- 
ing'than the introductory chapter upon Lee's ancestry. He 
was bom, as everybody knows, on the 19th of January, ISC'T, 
at Stratford, in Westmoreland Cotmty, Tirginia. But the 
splendors of his descent are not, perhaps, so universally ac- 
credited. Of pure Xorman blood, the long line of the Lees 
may be traced back to a certain Launcelot Lee, of Louder, 
in France, who accompanied William the Conqueror upon 
his grand freebooter's expedition to England. After Har- 



360 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

old's golden head and brave standard had sunk forever at 
Hastings, Launcelot was rewarded for his services by an es- 
tate in Essex. From that memorable date the name of Lee 
occurs continually in English annals, and 'always,' we are 
told, ' in honorable connection.' 

"There is Lionel Lee, who fought by Cceur de Lion's 
side in Palestine, and who for his gallantry at Acre, and in 
other battles with the infidel, was, on his return home, made 
the first Earl of Litchfield, and presented by the king with 
the estate of Ditchley ; subsequently held, as all the readers 
of Walter Scott must remember, by that indomitable old 
knight, Sir Henry Lee, who figures so conspicuously in 
' Woodstock.' 

" Then comes Richard Lee, the period of the unfortunate 
Surrey and his ally during that ' wof ul exj^edition ' across the 
Tweed, into Scotland. About the same time, two other 
Lees (whose Christian names are unknown) ' so distinguished 
themselves as to have their banners suspended in St. George's 
Chapel, Windsor, mth the Lee coat-of-arms emblazoned 
thereon,' and the ' significant family motto, Non incautus 
futiLri ! ' 

" Coming down to the time of the first Charles, we find 
the Lees in Shropshire, all stanch cavaliers. Then it was 
(probably during some lull in the civil war, or when the civil 
war had closed) that the ' accomplished ' Richard Lee ' deter- 
mined to remove to the J^ew World.' ' He was,' says Bishop 
Meade, ' a man of good stature, comely visage, enterprising 
genius, sound head, vigorous spirit, and most generous na- 
ture,' words we may apply literally to the person and charac- 
ter of his illustrious descendant. With this gentleman the 
noble stock of the Virginia Lees originated. 

" Henry, his fifth son, was a direct ancestor of our gen- 
eral. ' He married a Miss Bland ; their third son (Henry) 
maiTied a Miss Grymes,' and became the father of the cele- 
brated cavalry leader of the old Revolution, popularly known 
as ' Light-Horse Harry.' 



HIS DOMESTIC LIPE. 361 

" By a second wife, Anne Hill Carter — ^an aristocrat of 
the bluest Yirginia blood — he was blessed with his son, Eob- 
ert E. Lee, in the glory of whose renown the fame of the 
family line grows dim, comparatively, and feeble. 

" Lee's claims to high descent having been made clear, 
this biography intends to narrate his experiences and portray 
his character, rather in private than in public life. All of 
us know him as the soldier, but in this little book alone do 
we meet the man divested, in great measure, of the trappings 
of office, the halo of command. We learn, for the first time, 
to know him intimately in his civil, social, and domestic re- 
lations — as the citizen, companion, friend, husband, father, 
the wise instructor of the yoimg, and, in one comprehensive 
phrase, as the Christian gentleman. 

" In all such relations he appears to have been perfect. 
We scarcely exaggerate in saying that, since the death of 
the last of the Evangelists, probably no mortal man has 
passed through life, ' walking habitually nearer to his God,' 
in thought, conversation, worship, sublime simplicity of faith, 
in action, whose watchword was duty ; and devout contem- 
plation, soothed by the spirit and promises of the Redeeming 
Chi-ist! 

" His virtues, like his religion, were of large, simple, an- 
tique mould. His soul, mellowed, chastened, ennobled by 
suffering gravely yet nobly borne, had, as it were, ' a look 
southward, and was open to the beneficent noon of ]N'atm-e ' 
and Deity ! 

"He could no more have stooped to a meanness than 
he could voluntarily have committed moral suicide! A 
broad, unsophisticated, childlike, mediaeval nature was his, 
infinitely uplifted, gloriously enlightened by modern cult- 
ure, and all the graces and amenities of a true Christian 
discipleship. Take him all in all, and he stands, morally, 
alone. 

"Conventional standards of comparison fail us here. 
We cast aside om- petty rales, our ordinary methods of infer- 



362 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

ence, our poor standard measurements of every-day character, 
om* common judgments, too small by far to embrace a ma- 
jestic personality like tbis." 

Miss Emily V. Mason, in her " Popular Life of General 
Lee," gives tbe following account of bis early life : " AVben 
be was but f om* years of age, bis fatber removed to Alexan- 
dria, tbe better to educate bis cbildren ; and tbere are many 
persons yet living in tbat old town wbo remember bim at 
tbat early age. From tbese sources, we are assured tbat bis 
cbildbood was as remarkable as bis manbood for tbe mod- 
esty and tbougbtfulness of bis character, and for tbe per- 
formance of every duty wbicb devolved upon bim. Tbe 
family bved on Cameron Street, near tbe old Cbrist Cbm'cb, 
tben on Orinoco Street, and afterward in tbe bouse known 
as tbe parsonage. 

" At tbis period. General Henry Lee was absent in tbe 
"West Indies, in pursuit of bealtb, and, in one of bis admi- 
rable letters written to bis son Carter, tben a student at Cam- 
bridge, be says: 'Robert, wbo was always good, will be 
confirmed in bis bappy turn of mind by bis ever-watcbful 
and affectionate mother.' 

" When eleven years of age, bis fatber died. From one 
of the family wbo knew bim best, we are told tbat from his 
excellent mother he learned at tbis early age to ' practise self- 
denial and self-control, as well as tbe strictest economy in all 
financial concerns,' virtues which he retained throughout bis 
life. 

" Tbis good mother was a great invalid ; one of bis sisters 
was delicate, and many years absent in Philadelphia, under 
tbe care of physicians. The oldest son, Carter, was at 
Cambridge ; Sidney Smith in the navy, and tbe other sister 
too young to be of much aid in household matters. So Rob- 
ert was the house-keeper, carried tbe keys, attended to tbe 
marketing, managed all of the out-door business, and took 
care of his mother's horses. 

" At the bom- when tbe other school-boys went to play, he 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 363 

hurried home to order his mother's drive, and would there 
be seen carrying her in his arms to the carriage, and ar- 
ranging her cushions with the gentleness of an experienced 
nurse. One of his relatives, who was often the companion 
of these drives, still lives. She tells us of the exertions he 
would make on these occasions to entertain and amuse his 
mother, assuring her, with the gravity of an old man, that 
unless she was cheerful the drive would not benefit her. 
When she complained of cold or ' draughts,' he would pull 
from his pocket a great jack-knife and newspapers, and make 
her laugh with his efforts to improvise curtains, and shut out 
the intrusive wind which whistled through the crevices of 
the old family coach. 

" When he left her to go to West Point, his mother was 
heard to say : ' How can I live without Eobeii; ? He is both 
son and daughter to me.' 

" Tears after, when he came home from West Point, he 
found one of the chief actors of his childhood's drama — his 
mother's old coachman, 'E'at' — ill, and threatened with 
consumption. He immediately took him to the milder cli- 
mate of Georgia, nursed him with the tenderness of a son, 
and secured him the best medical advice. But the spring- 
time saw the faithful old sei-vant laid in the grave by the 
hands of his kind young master. 

" General Lee used to say that he was very fond of hunt- 
ing when a boy ; that he would sometimes follow the hounds 
on foot all day. This will account for his well-developed 
form, and for that wonderful strength which was never 
known to fail him in all the fatigues and privations of his 
after-life. . . . 

" Only last summer, when General Lee was in Alexandria, 
one of the old neighbors found him gazing wistfully over 
the palings of the garden in which he used to play. ' I am 
looking,' said he, ' to see if the old snowball-trees are still 
here. I should have been sorry to miss them.' 

" One of his friends gives a remarkable incident to show 



364 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

the influence which, even at this early day, his simple dig- 
nity and high sense of right exercised upon all who came in 
contact with him, the old as well as the young. Being in- 
vited during a vacation to visit a friend of his family who 
lived in the gay, rollicking style then but too common in 
old Virginia, he found in his host one of the grand old gen- 
tlemen of that day, with every fascination of mind and 
manner, who, though not of dissipated habits, led a life 
which the sterner sense of the boy could not approve. The 
old man shrunk before the unspoken rebuke of the youth- 
ful hero. Coming to his bedside the night before his de- 
parture, he lamented the idle and useless life into which he 
had fallen, excusing himself upon the score of loneliness, 
and the sorrow which weighed upon him in the loss of those 
most dear. In the most impressive manner he besought his 
young guest to be warned by his example, prayed him to 
cherish the good habits he had already acquired, and prom- 
ised to listen to his entreaties that he would change his 
own life, and thereby secure more entirely his respect and 
afEection." 

General Lee's recollections of his childhood home were 
always as vivid as they were tender and pleasant. To the 
young lady who made the sketch of his birthplace which we 
give, he wrote the following characteristic letter : 

" Lexington, Va., May 28, 1866. 
" Miss Mattie Ward, Gare of Rev. Wm. If. Ward, Warsaw Post- Office, Va. 
" My dear Miss Ward : I have just received from Rich- 
mond the two photographic copies of your painting of Strat- 
ford. Your picture vividly recalls scenes of my earliest recol- 
lections and happiest days. Though unseen for years, every 
feature of the house is familiar to me. 

" I return my sincere thanks for the pleasure you have given 
me, and beg you to accept my earnest wishes for your future 
happiness. 

" Your obedient servant, 

« R E. Lke." 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 365 

His first teaclier was Mr. W. B. Leary, an Irish gentle- 
man, who seems to have been a fine scholar and an excellent 
teacher. There always existed a warm friendship between 
Mr. Leary and his distinguished pnpil. After the close of 
the war he came to Lexington on a special visit to General 
Lee ; and during his Southern tour, the spring before his 
death, he came a long way to see him, and they had a most 
pleasant interview. 

Just after his visit to Lexington, the general wrote his old 
teacher the following letter : 

"Lkxington, Va., December 15, 1866. 
" Mr. "William B. Leahy. 

" My dear Sir : Your visit lias recalled to me years long 
since passed, when I was under your tuition, and received 
daily your instruction. In parting from you, I beg to express 
the gratitude I have felt all my life for the affectionate fidelity 
which characterized your teaching and conduct toward me. 

" I pray that the evening of your days may be blessed with 
peace and tranquillity, and that a merciful God may guide and 
protect you to the end. 

" Should any of my friends, wherever your lot may be cast, 
desire to know your qualifications as a teacher, I hope you will 
refer them to me ; for of them I can speak knowingly and from 
experience. 

" Wishing 3'-ou health, happiness, and prosperity, 

" I am affectionately your friend, R. E. Lee." 

Under Mr. Leary' s instruction he acquired that knowl- 
edge of the classics and fondness for them which surprised 
some of his friends who knew only of his military education. 

As soon as it was decided that he shoiild go to West 
Point, he was sent to the school of Mr. Benjamin Hallowell, 
who was for so many years a famous teaclier in Alexandria, 
in order to perfect himself in mathematics. This gentleman, 
although espousing the Federal cause during the war, always 
spoke in enthusiastic terms of his painstaking, successful 
pupil. 



366 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

Entering West Point at the age of eighteen, he was al- 
ways a great favorite among the cadets, although he declined 
to engage in their " pranks," and for a good part of the time 
was one of the " cadet officers," and exercised a rigid dis- 
cipline over them. He was an equal favorite among the 
professors and officers of the Academy, and graduated second 
in an unusually brilliant class, without having ever received 
a single demerit. 

Soon after his graduation he was summoned to the bed- 
side of his mother, whom he nursed with the tenderest devo- 
tion — administering all of her medicine and nourishment 
with his own hands, and faithfully watching her waning 
strength — until her summons came, and he was deprived of 
the affectionate counsel of that one to whom he was accus- 
tomed to say he " owed every thing." Much has been writ- 
ten of what the world owes to " Martha, the mother of Wash- 
ington ; " but it owes scarcely less to " Anne, the mother 
of Lee." 

When a boy, he was accustomed to visit Arlington, the 
splendid estate of George Washington Parke Custis (the 
grandson of Mrs. Washington,^ and the adopted son of the 
Pather of his Country), and there had as his playmate Mary 
Pandolph Custis. This childish friendship ripened into love, 
and on June 30, 1831, he led to the altar this only daughter 
of that illustrious house — the marriage ceremony being per- 
formed by Kev. Dr. Keith, of the Theological Seminary near 
Alexandria. Parely have two more congenial spirits united 
theu' fortunes, or walked together more lovingly the path- 
way of life. By this marriage Lieutenant Lee became a 
frequent resident at Arlington, of which Miss Mason gives 
the following vivid description : " This fine mansion stands 
on the Virginia Heights opposite Washington City, overlook- 
ing the Potomac, and was for many years an object of attrac- 
tion to all visitors to Washington, on account of its historical 
associations, and the Washington relics collected and pre- 
served by the patriotic father of Mrs. Lee. Here were to be 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 367 

seen the original portraits of General and Mrs. "Washington, 
painted at the time of their marriage, which have been so 
constantly reproduced; the portrait of Mrs. Washing-ton's 
first husband, Colonel Parke Custis ; of many of his pro- 
genitors; and several pictures of the great Revolutionary 
battles, painted by Mr. Custis, whose delight it was to per- 
petuate upon canvas the. features of the great man who had 
been to him a father, and to commemorate the important 
scenes in which he had been an actor. 

"Here, also, was the last original portrait of General 
Washington, by Sharpless, a distinguished English artist, who 
painted in crayons. Many of the pictm-es, and much of the 
old furniture of Mount Vernon, were here : the china pre- 
sented to Mrs. Washington by certain English merchants, 
upon which was her monogram ; that given to General Wash- 
ington by the Society of the Cincinnati ; the tea-table at 
which Mrs. Washington always presided ; a bookcase made 
by General Washmgton's own directions ; and the bed upon 
which he died. Arlington House was surrounded by groves 
of stately trees, except in front, where the hill descended to 
a lovely valley spreading away to the river. The view from 
the height showed Washington, Georgetown, and a long 
stretch of the Potomac, in the foreground, with wooded hills 
and valleys making a background of dark foliage." 

This beautiful home was the happy abode of the young 
officer and his accomplished bride during such time as he 
could spare from the active duties of his profession. And as 
the years went on, Arlington became more attractive by the 
sunshine which the presence of children biings. 

The present writer never enjoyed the privilege of a visit 
to Arlington, but, from what he knew of the model home in 
Lexington, is fully prepared to believe the statement of others 
that a happier home circle never gathered around the hearth- 
stone, and that it was at the same time the abode of a real 
" old Yirginia hospitality," rarely equaled even in the " An- 
cient Dominion." 



368 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

But, while unable to speak from personal observation of 
tliis part of General Lee's domestic life, I am indebted to 
tbe kindness of the family for some of bis letters wbicb 
beautifully illustrate it. 

Under date of October 16, 1837, be thus writes from St. 
Louis to bis wife : " The improved condition of tbe children, 
which you mention, was a source of great comfort to me ; 
and as I suppose, by this time, you have all returned to Ar- 
lington, you will be able to put them under a proper re- 
straint, wdiich you were probably obliged to relax while visit- 
ing among strangers, and which that indulgence will prob- 
ably render more essential. Our dear little boy seems to 
have among his friends the reputation of being hard to man- 
age — a distinction not at all desirable, as it indicates self-will 
and obstinacy. Perhaps these are qualities which he really 
possesses, and he may have a better right to them than I am 
willing to acknowledge ; but it is our duty, if possible, to 
counteract them and assist him to bring them under his con- 
trol. I have endeavored, in my intercourse with him, to 
require nothing but what was in my opinion necessary or 
proper, and to explain to him temperately its propriety, at a 
time when he could listen to my arguments, and not at the 
moment of his being vexed and his little faculties wai-ped by 
passion. I have also tried to show him that I was firm in 
my demands, and constant in their enforcement, and that he 
must comply with them ; and I let him see that I look to 
their execution, in order to relieve him as much as possible 
from the temptation to break them. Since my efforts have 
been so unsuccessful, I fear I have altogether failed in ac- 
complishing my purpose, but I hope to be able to profit by 
my experience. You must assist me in my attempts, and 
we must endeavor to combine the mildness and forbearance 
of the mother with the sternness and, perhaps, unreason- 
ableness of the father. This is a subject on which I think 

much, though M may blame me for not reading more. 

I am ready to acknowledge the good advice contained in the 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 3G9 

text-books, and believe tliat I see the merit of their reason- 
ing generally ; but what I want to learn is to apply what I 
already know. I pray God to watch over and direct our ef- 
forts in guarding our dear little son, that we may bring him 
up in the way he should go. ... 

" . . . . Oh, what pleasure I lose in being separated 
from m*y children ! Nothing can compensate me for that ; 
still I must remain here, ready to perform what little service 
I can, and hope for the best." 

While on his way to St. Louis, two years later, he wrote 
^rs. Lee the following letter : 

" Louisville, June 5, 1839. 

" ]^T DEABEST Mary : I arrived here last night, and, before 
going out this morning, will inform you of my well-doing thus 
far. 

" After leaving Staunton, I got on very well, but did not 
reach Guyandotte till Sunday afternoon, where, before alighting 
from the stage, I espied a boat descending the river, in which I 
took passage to Cincinnati. . . . You do not know how much I 
have missed you and the children, vay dear Mary. To be alone in 
a crowd is very solitary. In the woods I feel sympathy with the 
trees and birds, in whose company I take delight, but experience 
no pleasure in a strange crowd. 

" I hope you are all well and will continue so, and therefore 
must again urge you to be very prudent and careful of those 
dear children. If I could only get a squeeze at that little fellow 
turning up his sweet mouth to ' keese baba ! ' You must not 
let him run wild in my absence, and will have to exercise firm 
authority over all of them. This will not require severity, or 
even strictness, but constant attention and an unwavering 
course. Mildness and forbearance, tempered by firmness and 
judgment, will strengthen their affection for you, while it will 
maintain your control over them." 

The following letter, to one of his sons, well illustrates 
his method of gaining the affectionate confidence of his chil- 
dren : 

24 



370 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

"Fort Hamilton, New York, March 31, 1816. 

" I cannot go to bed, my dear son, without writing you a 
few lines to thank you for your letter, which gave me great 
pleasure. I am glad to hear you are well, and hope you are 
learning to read and write, and that the next letter you will be 
able to write yourself. I want to see you very much, and to tell 
you all that has happened since you went away. 

" I do not think I ever told you of a fine boy I heard of in 
my travels this winter. He lived in the mountains of New 
Hampshire. He was just thirteen years old, the age of Custis. 
His father was a farmer, and he used to assist him to work on 
the farm as much as he could. The snow there this winter was 
deeper than it has been for years, and one day he accompanied 
his father to the woods to get some wood. They went with 
their wood-sled, and, after cutting a load and loading the sled, 
this little boy, whose name was Harry, drove it home while his 
father cut another load. He had a fine team of horses and re- 
turned very quickly, when he found his father lying prostrate on 
the frozen snow under the large limb of a tree he had felled dur- 
ing his absence, which had caught him in its fall, and thrown him 
to the ground. He was cold and stiff; and little Harry, finding 
that he was not strong enough to relieve him from his position, 
seized his axe and cut off the limb, and rolled it off of him. He 
then tried to raise him, but his father was dead and his feeble 
efforts were all in vain. Although he was out in the far woods 
by himself, and had never before seen a dead person, he was 
nothing daunted, but backed his sled close up to his father, and 
with great labor got his body on it, and, placing his head in his 
lap, drove home to his mother as fast as he could. The efforts 
of his mother to reanimate him were equally vain with his own, 
and the sorrowing neighbors came and dug him a grave under 
the cold snow, and laid him quietly to rest. His mother was 
greatly distressed at the loss of her husband, but she thanked 
God who had given her so good and brave a son. 

" You and Custis must take great care of your kind mother 
and dear sisters when j'our father is dead. To do that you 
must learn to be good. Be true, kind, and generous, and pray 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 3 71 

earnestly to God to enable you to ' keep his commandments, and 
walk in the same all the days of your life.' 

" Alec and Frank are well, and the former has begun to ride 
his pony, Jim, again. Captain Bennett has bought his little 
boy a donkey, and, as I came home, I met him riding him, with 
two large Newfoundland dogs following, one on each side. The 
dogs were almost as large as the donkey. My horse Jerry did 
not know what to make of them. I go to New York, now, on 
horseback every day ; one day I ride Jerry, and the next Tom, 
and I think they begin to go better under the saddle than for- 
merly. I hope to come on soon to see that little baby you have 
got to show me. You must give her a kiss for me, and one to 
all the children, and to your mother and grandmother, 

" Good-by, my dear son. 

" Your affectionate father, R. E, Lee." 

A year later lie wrote the following : 

" Ship Massachusetts, off Lobos, Felruary 27, 1847. 
" My dear Boys : I received your letters with the greatest 
pleasure, and, as I always like to talk to you both together, I 
will not separate you in my letters, but write one to yo\x both. 
I was much gratified to hear of your progress at school, and hope 
that you will continue to advance, and that I shall have the 
happiness of finding you much improved in all your studies on 
my return. I shall not feel my long separation from you, if I 
find that my absence has been of no injury to you, and that you 
have both grown in goodness and knowledge, as well as stature. 
But, ah ! how much I will suffer on my return, if the reverse has 
occurred ! You enter all my thoughts, into all my prayers ; 
and on you, in part, will depend whether I shall be happy or 
miserable, as you know how much I love you. You must do all 
in your power to save me pain. You will learn, by my letter to 
your grandmother, that I have been to Tampico. I saw many 
things to remind me of you, though that was not necessary to 
make me wish that you were with me. The river was so calm 
and beautiful, and the boys were playing about in boats, and 
swimming their ponies. Then there were troops of donkeys 



373 REMINISCEXCE3 OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

carrying water through the streets. Tliey had a kind of saddle, 
something like a cart-saddle, though larger, that carried two ten- 
gallon kegs on each side, which was a load for a donke}^ They 
had no bridles on, but would come along in strings to the river, 
and, as soon as their kegs were filled, start off again. The}' 
were fatter and sleeker than any donkeys I had ever seen before, 
and seemed to be better cared for. I saw a great many ponies, 
too. They were larger than those in the upper country, but did 
not seem so enduring. I got one to ride around the fortifica- 
tions. He had a Mexican bit and saddle on, and paced delight- 
fully, but, every time my sword struck him on the flanks, would 
jump and try to run off. Several of them had been broken to 
harness by the Americans, and I saw some teams, in wagons, 
driven four-in-hand, well matched and trotting well. We had a 
grand parade on General Scott's arrival. The troops were all 
drawn up on the bank of the river, and fired a salute as he 
passed them. He landed at the market, where lines of sentinels 
were placed to keep off the crowd. In front of the landing the 
artillery was drawn up, w^hich received him in the centre of the 
column, and escorted him through the streets to his lodgings. 
They had provided a handsome gray horse, richly caparisoned, 
for him, but he preferred to walk, with his staff around him, and 
a dragoon led the horse behind us. The windows along the 
streets we passed were crowded with people, and the boys and 
girls were in great glee, the Governor's Island band playing all 
the time. 

" There were six thousand soldiers in Tampico. Mr. Barry 
was the adjutant of the escort. I think you Avould have enjoj'ed 
with me the oranges and sweet-potatoes. Major Smith be- 
came so fond of the chocolate that I could hardly get him away 
from the house. We only remained there one day. I have a 
ni(3e state-room on board this ship ; Joe Johnston and myself 
occupy it, but my poor Joe is so sick all the time I can do noth- 
ing with him. I left Jem to come on with the horses, as I 
was afraid they would not be properly cared for. Vessels were 
expressly fitted up for the horses, and parties of dragoons de- 
tailed to take care of them. I had hoped they would reach here 
by this time, as I wanted to see how they were fixed. I took 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 373 

every precautioa for their comfort, provided them with bran, 
oats, etc., and had slings made to pass under them and attached 
to the coverings above, so that, if in the heavy sea they should 
slip, or be thrown off their feet, they could not fall. I had to 
sell my good old horse Jim, as I could not find room for him, 
or, rather, I did not want to crowd the others. I know I shall 
want him when 1 land. Creole was the admiration of every 
one at Brazos, and they hardly believed she had carried me so 
far, and looked so well. Jem says there is nothing like her in 
all the country, and I believe he likes her better than Tom or 
Jerry. The sorrel mare did not appear to be so well after I got 
to the Brazos. I had to put one of the men on her, whose horse 
had given out, and the saddle hurt her back. She had gotten 
well, however, before I left, and I told Jem to ride her every day. 
I hope they may both reach the shore again in safety, but I fear 
they will have a hard time. They will first have to be put 
aboard a steamboat and carried to the ship that lies about two 
miles out at sea, then boisted in, and how we shall get them 
ashore again, I do not know. Probably throw them overboard, 
and let them swim there. I do not think we shall remain here 
more than one 'day longer. General Worth's and General 
Twiggs's di\usions have arrived, whicb include the regulars, and 
I suppose the volunteers will be coming on every day. We 
shall probably go on the 1st down the coast, select a place 
for debarkation, and make all the arrangements preparatory to 
the arrival of the troops. I shall have plenty to do there, and 
am anxious for the time to come, and hope all may be successful. 
Tell Rob lie must think of me very often, be a good boy, and 
always love papa. Take care of Speck and the colts. Mr. 
Sedgwick and all the oiSficers send their love to you. 

" The ship rolls so that I can scarcely write. You must 
write to me very often. I am always very glad to hear from 
you. Be sure that I am thinking of you, and that you have the 
prayers of your affectionate father, R. E, Lee." 

The general related a pleasing incident of one of his boys 
with whom he was walking out in the snow one day, at Ar- 
lington. The little fellow lagged behind, and, looking over 



374 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

liis shoulder, the father saw him imitating his every move- 
ment, with head and shoulders erect, and stepping exactly in 
his own foot-prints. " When I saw this," said the general, 
"■ I said to myself, ' It behooves me to walk very straight, when 
this fellow is already following in my tracks.' " And accord- 
ingly there was never a more circumspect father than was 
this great man. 

After his brilliant career in Mexico, he returned to the 
States, and found his chief joy in the bosom of his family. 
His stay at West Point as its superintendent was pleasant on 
account of the opportunity it afforded him of seeing more of 
his family, and his only regret at being ordered in February, 
1856, to the rough service of the frontier seems to have been 
the fact that he would thus be far distant from his loved 
ones. 

Some extracts from his letters written about this period 
have already been given. 

The followin'g is a pleasing insight into his feelings as he 
thought of home in his far-off field of duty : 

"Fort Brown, Texas, December, 1856. 

" . . . . The time is approaching, dear M ,' when I trust 

that many of you will be assembled around the family hearth of 
dear Arlington to celebrate another Christmas. Though absent, 
my heart will be in the midst of you. I shall enjoy in imagina- 
tion and memory all that is going on. May nothing occur to 
mar or cloud the family fireside, and may all be able to look 
with pride and pleasure to their deeds of the past year, and with 
confidence and hope to that in prospect ! I can do nothing but 
love and pray for you all." 

The following is the close of a long letter dated " Fort 
Brown, Texas, December 27, 1856 : " 

" I hope you all had a joyous Christmas at Arlington, and 
that it may be long and often repeated. I thought of you, and 
wished to be with you. Mine was gratefully but silently passed. 
I endeavored to find some presents for the children in the gar- 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 375 

rison, and succeeded better than I anticipated. The stores 
were very barren, but by taking them the week beforehand in 

my daily walks, I picked up something for all. Tell M I 

found a beautiful Dutch doll for little Emma, one of those cry- 
ing babies that can open and shut their eyes ; for two others, 
handsome French teapots to match their cups. Then with knives 
and books I satisfied the boys. After this, went to church, 
then, by previous invitation, Major Thomas and I dined with 
the clergyman, Mr. Passmore, on roast - turkey and plum-pud- 
ding. God bless you all ! Yours, R. E. Lee." 



The following sliows that he had a heart to feel for the 
afflicted : 

" Camp Cooper, June 22, 1857. 
" There is little to relate. The hot weather seems to have 
set in permanently. The thermometer ranges above one hun- 
dred degrees, but the sickness among the men is on the decrease, 
though there has been another death among the children. He 
was as handsome a little boy as I ever saw — the son of one of 
our sergeants, about a year old ; I was admiring his appearance 
the day before he was taken ill. Last Thursday his little waxen 
form was committed to the earth. His father came to me, the 
tears flowing down his cheeks, and asked me to read the funeral 
service over his body, which I did at the grave for the second 
time in my life. I hope I shall not be called on again, for, 
though I believe that it is far better for the child to be called by 
its heavenly Creator into his presence in its purity and inno- 
cence, unpolluted by sin, and uncontaminated by the vices of the 
world, still it so wrings a parentis heart with anguish that it is 
painful to see. Yet I know it was done in mercy to both — 
mercy to the child, mercy to the parents. The former has been 
saved from sin and misery here, and the latter have been given 
a touching appeal and powerful inducement to prepare for 
hereafter. May it prove effectual, and may they require no fur- 
ther severe admonition ! 

" May God guard and bless you all ! Truly and affection- 
ately yours, R. E. Lee." 



376 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, 

The following was written to one of Lis sons soon after 
he joined the army : 

" Aklington, May 30, 1858. 

" I received yesterday in Alexandria, my dearest son, your 
letter of the 19th inst., from ' Camp C. F. May.' 1 had heard of 
your departure from Governor's Island, and was very glad to 
learn of your safe arrival at your starting-point, and of your 
assignment to the adjutancy of Captain Heth's battalion. You 
are now in a position to acquire military credit, and to prepare 
the road for promotion and futm-e advancement. Show your 
ability and worthiness of distinction, and if an opportunity offers 
for advancement in the staff (I do not refer to the quartermas- 
ter's or commissary department), unless that is not your fancy, 
take it. It may lead to something favorable, and you can always 
relinquish it when you choose. 

" I hope you will always be distinguished for your avoid- 
ance of the ' universal balm,' whiskey^ and every immorality. 
Nor need you fear to be ruled out of the society that indulges 
in it, for you will acquire their esteem and respect, as all ven- 
erate if they do not practise virtue. I am sorry to say that 
there is great proclivity for spirit in the army in the field. It 
seems to be considered a substitute for every luxury. The 
great body may not carry it to extremes, but many pursue it 
to their ruin. With some it is used as a means of hospital- 
ity, and your commanding used to value it highly in this 

way, and perhaps partook of it in this spirit. I think it better 
to avoid it altogether, as you do, as its temperate use is so 
difficult. I hope you will make many friends, as you will be 
thrown with those who deserve this feeling, but indiscriminate 
intimacies you will find annoying and entangling, and they can 
be avoided by politeness and civility. You see I am following 
my old habit of giving advice, which I dare say you neither need 
nor require. But you must pardon a fault which proceeds from 
my great love and burning anxiety for your welfare and happi- 
ness. When I think of your youth, impulsiveness, and many 
temptations, your distance from me, and the ease (and even in- 
nocence) with which you might commence an erroneous course, 
my heart quails within me, and my whole frame and being tram- 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 377 

ble at the possible result. May Almighty God have you in His 
holy keeping ! To His merciful providence I commit you, and 
will rely upon Him, and the eflScacy of the prayers that will be 
daily and hourly offered up by those who love you," 

Then follow some interesting items about army move- 
ments, family matters, etc. 

The following is given in full, as a model family letter : 

" Arlington, August V, 1868. 
" I was delighted, my dear son, to receive your letter of the 
7th of July, and to learn that you were well, and so contented 
and happy in j'Our new life. I know that, although there is 
much to weary and annoy in a camj^aign, there is much to cheer 
and excite, and I recognize in the expression of your feelings 
many of my own experiences. I am sorry that my letters are 
so dilatory in reaching you. They will follow you in time, and, 
I hope, lose no interest by the way. You must make allow- 
ances for your forward movement, as well as the distance they 
have to overcome. I wrote immediately on the reception of 
your letter from Leavenworth, and your mother has replied to 
those to her from the Blue and Platte Rivers. As you have 
heard so regularly from C , I hope you have been com- 
pensated for the absence of other letters. But what has she 
been saying to you, that you talk of coming back this winter to 
be married ? I thought that ceremony had been postponed for 
two years ! However, if you young people so wish it, I suppose 
it will have to come off earlier. About that, you must deter- 
mine. You will have heard, by this time, of the destination of 
your regiment. If it goes to Oregon, which, I think, is more 
than probable, will you be able to leave it on the route ? I 
think that will be the difficulty. After reaching Oregon, and 
the service is accomplished for which the troops are sent there, 

I should think you might get a leave of absence, and take C 

back with you en route to China, to see the Celestials. Would 
that ansAver as a wedding-tour ? Of all this, you, being on the 
spot, and knowing all the circumstances, will be the better 
judge, and must determine. I can only hope and pray that all 



378 EEMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

things may work together for the good and happiness of jou 

both. I liad hoped, before this, to have seen C at the 

Alum Springs, and had made my preparations to have carried 
your mother a fortnight since, nolens volens, to the JETot. But, 

two days before the. day fixed for our departure, Mr. M was 

taken sick with a complicated attack from which he has not yet 
recovered. He is now better, but is not yet able to come out. 
I hope, by Tuesday next, 10th inst., we shall be off. I think 
vour mother is very glad of the detention, and, except on her 
account and the benefit that I hope she will derive from the 
trip, I should be, too. I leave home with great inconvenience, 
and shall have to return, after depositing her there. Annie 
goes with her, and I thought I would take her over to the 
AluQi, to see Charlotte. The other children do not incline to 

the ITot. R , who is with us, begs that he may not sufi"er 

again, and Agnes is going on a tour of her own to Ravensworth, 

Chantilly, etc. M , you know, is in B , nursing your aunt 

Anne. She is well, and proposes going to the Bulphuret Soda 
with your uncle Carter, who is expected along about this time. 

" Your mother, I presume, has told you of all home-news, I 
will not, therefore, repeat. I am getting along as usual — trying 
to get a little work done, and to mend up some things. I suc- 
ceed very badly. I am very glad, my dear son, you are pro- 
gressing so well. I hope you will prove yourself a capable sol- 
dier, and win golden opinions from the whole army. I have 
good accounts of you from all. There is no military news, and 
the papers will inform you of all else. Remember me to all the 
ofiicers. Take care of yourself in all respects, and think con- 
stantly of Your devoted father, 

"R. E. Lee." 

Under date of January 1, 1859, lie writes from Arling- 
ton the following playful letter to liis son : 

" A happy New-Year ! and many returns of the same to 
you, my precious Roon ! Ours has been gladdened by the 
reception of your letter of the ,4th of December, from Presidio 
Barracks. It is the first line that has reached us since your 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 379 

second letter from Fort Bridger. I am sorry you have received 
nothing from us. I have written often, and by various routes, 
and other members of the family have done the same. Those 
that are toiling over the plains, I suppose, will never reach you. 
When I first learned that the Sixth was ordered to the Pacific, 
I sent some letters to Benicia ; when your letter arrived from 
Fort Bridger, saying your regiment had departed from Salt Lake, 
and tlTat you were called to Camp Floyd, I inclosed some let- 
ters to Major Porter's care. After seeing that the regiment was 
stopped at Carson's Valley, and had sent back for animals, I 
conjectured that you would be pushed on with your recruits, and 
would labor through to the Pacific, and I resumed my direction 
to Benicia. Surely, some of these latter should reach you. . . . 
But, now that you have caught Custis, I hope you are indemni- 
fied for all your privations. I am delighted at you two being 
together, and nothing has occurred so gratifying to me for the 
past year. Hold on to him as long as you can. Kiss him for 
me, and sleep with him every night. He must do the same to 
you, and charge it all to my account. God grant that it could 
be my good fortune to be with you both ! I am glad that you 
stood the march so well, and are so robust and bearded. I al- 
waj's thought and said there was stuff in you for a good soldier, 
and I trust you will prove it. I cannot express the gratification 
I felt, in meeting Colonel May in New York, at the encomiums 
he passed upon your soldiership, zeal, and devotion to your duty. 
But I was more pleased at the report of your conduct. That 
went nearer my heart, and was of infinite comfort to me. Hold 
on to your purity and virtue. They will proudly sustain you in 
all trials and difficulties, and cheer you in every calamity. I 
was sorry to see, from yovir letter to your mother, that you 
smoke occasionally. It is dangerous to meddle with. You 
have in store so much better employment for your mouth. Re- 
serve it, Roon, for its legitimate pleasure. Do not poison and 
corrupt it with stale vapors, or tarnish your beard with their 
stench. . . . 

" All send love. 

" Very truly and affectionately, your father, 

"R. E. Lee." 



380 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

He thus begins a letter to liis son^ dated " Arlington, 
New-Year, 1860 : " 

" I was delighted yesterday, my dearest Fitzhugh, at receiv- 
ing your letter of the 28th ult., and to my cordial congratula- 
tions at your prospects for the New- Year, and sincere wishes 
for many and more gratifying returns, will this morning add my 
heart-felt gratitude at your joyous commencement of life.* May 
you and my dear Charlotte realize your highest anticipations, 
and experience the happiness of a long, well-spent life, and the 
full satisfaction of the performance of all your duties to God and 
man ! . . . " 

Then follows exceedingly practical advice about the best 
methods of fanning the plantation at the White House. 

The following pleasant letter, on a most important family 
event, will be read with interest : 

"Ringgold Barracks, Ap7-il 2, 1860. 

" I was delighted, my dear son, at the reception of your let- 
ter of the 10th ult., announcing the birth of that anxiously-ex- 
pected little boy ! ' I sincerely congratulate you and my darling 
daughter at his prosperous advent, and pray that his futme ca- 
reer may give more happiness to his parents than even his pres- 
ent existence. You must kiss his dear mother for me, and offer 
her my warmest thanks for this promising scion of my scattered 
house, who will, I hope, resuscitate its name and fame. Tell 
her I have thought much of her, and long to see you both, and 
your little treasure, who must, I think, greatly resemble his 
papa. . . . 

" And now the school-house must be commenced, or it will 
not be in time. I hope both mother and child are well and in- 
creasing daily in strength, so as to enjoy the fine spring weather 
which must have commenced in earnest by this time. Your 
mamma must have rejoiced at another bab^ in the house, and 
have had all her former feelings brought back afresh. I never 
could see the infantine beauties that she did, but I will be able 
to appreciate him by the time I shall see him. . . . 



mS DOMESTIC LIFE. 381 

In a letter from San Antonio, dated June 2, 1800, he 



" In a letter to Cliarlotte, written since my return, I expressed 
the gratification I felt at the compliment paid me in your inten- 
tion to call my first grandchild after me. I wish I could offer 
him a more worthy name and a better example. He must ele- 
vate the first, and make use of the latter to avoid the errors I 
have committed. I also expressed the thought that under the 
circumstances you might like to name him after his great-grand- 
father, and wish you both, ' upon mature consideration,' to fol- 
low your inclinations and judgment. I should love him all the 
same, and nothing could make me love you two more than I 
do. . . ." 

In a long and eminently common-sense letter written his 
son, under date of August 22, 1860, he says : 

"I am glad to hear that your mechanics are all paid off, 
and that you have managed your funds so well as to have 
enough for your purposes. As you have commenced, I hope 
you will continue, never to exceed your means. It will save you 
much anxiety and mortification, and enable you to maintain 
your independence of character and feeling. It is easier to 
make our wishes conform to our means than to make our means 
conform to our wishes. In fact, we want but little. Our hap- 
piness depends upon cur independence, the success of our oper- 
ations, prosperity of our plans, health, contentment, and the 
esteem of our friends. All of which, my dear son, I hope you 
may enjoy to the full. ..." 

He thus begins the letter from which a quotation is made 
in a previous chapter : 

"Fort Mason, San Antonio Post-Office, January 29, 1861. 
" Mt dear Son : I have received your letter of the 6th in- 
stant, giving me the pleasing account of your quiet and happy 

Christmas, the presence of Rob. the visit of Mr. D , and the 

christening of your boy. So he is called after his grandpapa, 



382 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

the dear little fellow ; I would wish him a better name, and hope 
he may be a wiser and more useful man than his namesake. 
Such as it is, however, I gladly place it in his keeping, and feel 
that he must be very little like his father if it is not elevated 
and ennobled by his bearing and course in life. You must teach 
him, then, to love his grandpapa, to bear with his failings, and 
avoid his errors, to be to you as you have been to me, and he 
may then enjoy the love and confidence of his father, which I feel 
for you, greater than which no son has ever possessed. But 
what is the matter with my precious Chass ? I fear her house is 
not warm enough for her in this cold and snowy weather. She 
must be very careful not to take cold, but to go out every day. 
Tell her I want to see her very much, and love her more and 
more." 

These family letters show that a happier home circle 
could not be found than that of this loving family, when 
the storm of war burst upon the peaceful abode of Arling- 
ton. It was a bitter trial for General Lee, as it was for each 
member of his family, to sunder these ties, and give up this 
happy home ; and yet, when his loved Yirginia called, he did 
not hesitate to lay on her altar Arlington with all its hal- 
lowed associations, and to go forth an exile forever from the 
dear old roof-tree. 

His three sons promptly followed him into the Con- 
federate army, and his noble wife and accomplished daugh- 
ters bade a sad farewell to Arlington just before the " Grand 
Army" crossed the Potomac, and occupied its beautiful 
groves as their first camping-ground on the soil of Virginia. 

It was, perhaps, not intended then i but, as the fierce 
struggle went on, this beautiful home was desolated, its 
groves were cut down, its furniture was carried oil, its pre- 
cious relics of "Washington (the great " rebel " of 1776) were 
scattered all over the North, the estate seized and held by the 
United States Government (under the form of a bogus " tax 
sale "), the grounds converted into a soldiers' cemetery, and 
the rightful heirs banished from their ancestral halls. (May 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 383 

the day be not far distant when this blot upon the American 
name shall be removed, at least so far as to pay the lawful 
heir who yet survives a just compensation for the property 
thus wi'ested from him !) 

General Lee's family sought refuge at " the White House " 
on the Pamunkey, where Washington had married the 
"Widow Custis," and which had been bequeathed by G. W. 
P. Custis to the " second son " of Lieutenant Lee's marriage 
with his daughter. 

But when General McClellan advanced up the Penin- 
sula, in the spring of 1862, the family became refugees 
again. 

Before leaving the last homestead which remained to 
her, Mrs, Lee wrote and affixed to the door of the house the 
following appeal : 

"Northern soldiers who profess to reverence Washington, 
forbear to desecrate the home of his first married life, the prop- 
erty of his wife, now owned by her descendants. 

"A Gkaitodaughter of Mrs. Washington." 

One of McClellan's officers wrote beneath this: "A 
Northern officer has protected your property in sight of the 
enemy, and at the request of your overseer." 

But, unfortuuately, the "protection" did not last long, 
and, during McClellan's famous " change of base," the house 
was burned to the ground, and " not a blade of grass left to 
mark the culture of more than a hundred years." 

The letters written by General Lee to his family, during 
the war, would of themselves form a volume of interest. I 
am fortunate in being able to present a number of them — 
regretting that want of space prevents the insertion of many 
more : 

"Settell Mount, October 12, 1861. 
" Mt dear FrPZHTJGH : I am grieving over your absence, 
and fear you are* not comfortable. Tell me how you are. I learn 
that the baby is doing very well and getting quite fat. Your 



384 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

poor mother, ^yho was in Charlottesville Saturday, was going to 

Richmond to join C and accompany her to the White House. 

I hope they will enjoy the quiet of the place, and each other's 
company. Annie and Agnes are in Richmond, on their way to 
Cedar Grove. They have been to Uncle Carter's, and are well 
satisfied with their visit. 

" The enemy in strong force threatened us for a week. I was 
in hopes they would attack, but after some sharp skirmishing 
with their reconnoitring-parties last Saturday night they retired, 
and by daybreak next morning their rear - guard was fifteen 
miles off. We followed the first day without provisions, and 
had to return at night in a drenching rain. We have only lived 
from day to day, and on three-fourths rations at that. It is the 
want of supplies that has prevented our advancing, and up to 
this time there is rio improvement. The strength of the enemy 
is variously reported, by prisoners and civilians, as from seven- 
teen to twenty-four thousand. General Floyd puts them down 
at eighteen thousand. I think their numbers are much over- 
rated, but that they are much stronger than we are. I believe 
they have crossed the Gauley, and will not return this winter. 

'' God bless you, my dear son ! 

" Your devoted father, R. E. Lee." 

The following was written just after the first Manassas : 

"Richmond, July 21, 1861. 

" I have received, dear M , your letter from E View 

and am glad your visit has been so agreeable. . . . That indeed 
was a glorious victory, and has lightened the pressure upon our 
front amazingly. Do not grieve for the brave dead. Sorrow 
for those they left behind, friends, relations, and families. The 
former are at rest, the latter must suffer. The battle will be re- 
peated there in greater force. I hope God will again smile upon 
us, and strengthen our hearts and arms. 

" I wished to participate in the former battle, but the Presi- 
dent thought it more important that I should be here. I could 
not have done as well, but could have helped, and taken part 
in the struggle for my home and neighborhood. So the work 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 385 

is done, I care not by whom it is done. I leave to-morrow for 
the new army. 

" I wished to go before, as I wrote you, and was all prepared, 
but the indications were so evident of the coming battle that, in 
the uncertainty of the result, the President forbade my departure. 
Now it is necessary, and he consents. I inclose a letter from 

M . Write to her if you can, and thank her, for I have not 

time. Every moment is occupied, and all my thoughts and 
strength are given to the cause to which my life, be it long or 
short, will be devoted." 

The following was written while he was on duty on the 
coast of South Carolina, and is indeed a gem worth preserv- 
ing: 

" CoosAWHATCHiK, S. C, December 25, 1861. 
" Mt dear Daughter: Having distributed such poor Christ- 
mas gifts as I had to those around me, I have been looking for 
something for you. Trifles even are hard to get these war-times, 
and you must not therefore expect more. I have sent you what 
I thought most useful in your separation from me, and hope it 
will be of some service. Though stigmatized as ' vile dross,' it 
has never been a drug with me. That you may never want for 
it, restrict jomx wants to your necessities. Yet how little will it 
purchase ! But see how God provides for our pleasure in every 
way. To compensate for such 'trash,' I send you some sweet 
violets, that I gathered for you this morning while covered with 
dense white frost, whose crystals glittered in the bright sun like 
diamonds, and formed a brooch of rare beauty and sweetness 
which could not be fabricated by the expenditure of a world of 
money. May God guard and preserve you for me, my dear 
daughter ! Among the calamities of war, the hardest to bear, 
perhaps, is the separation of families and friends. Yet all must 
be endured to accomplish our independence, and maintain our self- 
government. In my absence from you, I have thought of you 
very often, and regretted I could do nothing for your comfort. 
Your old home, if not destroyed by our enemies, has been so 
desecrated that I cannot bear to think of it. I should have pre- 
ferred it to have been wiped from the earth, its beautiful hill 
25 



386 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

sunk, and its sacred trees buried, rather than to have been de- 
graded by the presence of those who revel in the ill they do for 
their own selfish purposes. You see what a poor sinner I am, 
and how unworthy to possess what was given me ; for that 
reason it has been taken away. I pray for a better spirit, and 
that the hearts of ovu- enemies may be changed. In your home- 
less condition, I hope you make yourself contented and useful. 
Occupy yourself in aiding those more helpless than yourself. . . . 
Think always of your father, R. E. Lee." 

If any apology is needed for unveiling to the public gaze 
the following letter (and others addressed to the same person 
that will be afterward given), it may be found in the fact that 
the affectionate, playful nature of the great man is thus more 
beautifully brought out than in any other way, and a chief 
objection to the publication is, alas ! removed in the untimely 
death of the accomplished woman to whom it was addressed : 

" CoosAWHATCHiE, S. C, December 29, 1861. 

" You have no occasion to inform me, you precious Chass, 
that you have not written to me for a long time. That I already 
knew, and you know that the letters I am obliged to write do 
not prevent my reading letters from you. 

" If it requires fits of indignation to cause you to ventilate 
your paper, I will give occasion for a series of spasms, but in the 
present case I am innocent, as my proposition was for you to 
accompany your mamma to Fayetteville, and not to run off with 
her son to Fredericksburg. I am afraid the enemy will catch 
you ; and, besides, there are too many young men there. I only 
want you to visit the old men, your grandpapa and papa. But 
what has got into your heads to cause you to cut off of them 
your hair? If you will weave some delicate fabrics for the sol- 
diers of the family out of it, I will be content with the sacrifice ; 
or, if it is an expression of a penitential mood that has come 

over you young women, I shall not complain. Poor little A ! 

Somebody told me that a widower had been making sweet eyes 
at her through his spectacles. Perhaps she is preparing for 
caps. But you can tell her not to distress herself. Her papa is 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 387 

not going to give her up in that way. 1 am, however, so glad 
that you are all together that I am willing you should indulge 
in some extravagances if they do not result in serious hurt, as 
they will afford a variety to the grave occupation of knitting, 
sewing, spinning, and weaving. You will have to get out the 
old wheels and looms again, else I do not know where we poor 
Confederates will get clothes. I have a plenty of old ones for 
the present, but how are they to be renewed ? And that is the 
condition of many others. I do not think there are manufacto- 
ries sufficient in the Confederacy to supply the demand ; and, as 
the men are all engrossed by the war, the women will have to 
engage in the business. Fayetteville or Stratford would be a 
fine position for a domestic manufactory. When you go to see 
your grandpa, consult him about it. I am glad to hear that he 
is well, and hope he will not let these disjointed times put him 
out of his usual way or give him inconvenience. I would not 
advise him to commence building at Broadneck until he sees 
whether the enemy can be driven from the land, as they have a 
great fondness for destroying residences when they can do it 
without danger to themselves. . . . Do not let them get that 
precious baby, as he is so sweet that they would be sure to eat 

him. . . . Kiss F for me and the baby. That is the sweetest 

Christmas-gift I can send them. I send you some sweet violets ; 
I hope they may retain their fragrance till you receive them. I 
have just gathered them for you. The sun has set, and my eyes 
plead for relief, for they have had no rest this holy day. But 
my heart with all its strength stretches toward you, and those 
with you, and hushes in silence its yearnings. God bless you, 
my daughter, your dear husband, and son ! Give much love to 
your mamma, and may every blessing attend you all, prays 
" Yom- devoted father, R. E, Lee." 

In a letter to one of his sons, under date of February 16, 
1861, lie says : 

" I am very glad to hear that you are well, and that you 
have attained such a high position by your own merit. I hope 
you will strive hard to show that you deserve it, and that you 



388 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

will go on increasing in honor and usefulness. Our country re- 
quires now every one to put forth all his ability regardless of 
self, and I am cheered in my downward path in life by the on- 
ward and rising course of my dear sons." 

The following playful letter was \Yritten to one of his 
daughters on her attaining her sixteenth birthday : 

" Savannah, i^eSraaj-i/ 26, 1862. 

" And are you really sweet sixteen ? That is charming, and 
I want to see you more than ever. But, when that will be, my 
darling child, I have no idea. I hope, after the war is over, we 
may again all be united, and I may have some pleasant years 
with my dear children, that they may cheer the remnant of my 
days. I am very glad to hear that you are progressing so well 
in your studies, and that your reports are so favorable. Your 
mother wrote me about them. You must continue to do like- 
wise to the end of the session, when I hope you will be able to 
join your mother. It has been a long time since I have seen 
you, and you must have grown a great deal. Rob says he is 
told that you are a young woman. I have grown so old, and 
become so changed, that you would not know me. But I love 
you just as much as ever, and you know how great a love that 

is. You must remember me to the P s, j'^our cousin M , 

Mrs. B , the C s, etc., and tell them how obliged I am 

for their kindness to you. I hope you appreciate it, and that 
your manners and conduct are so well regulated as to make your 
presence and company agreeable to them. 

" I hope you will be admired and loved by all my friends, 
and acquire the friendship of all the good and virtuous. 

" I am glad S agrees with you so well. You know it is 

considered vulgar for young ladies to eat, which I suppose is 
the cause of your abstinence. But do not carry it too far, for, 
you know, I do not admire young women who are too thin. 

" Who is so imprudent in Clarke as to get married ? I did 
not think, in these days of serious occurrences, that any one 
would engage in such trivial amusements. 

" This is a serious period, indeed, and the time looks dark ; 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 389 

but it will brighten again, and I hope a kind Providence will 
yet smile upon us, and give us freedom and independence. 

" These reverses were necessarj-, to make us brace ourselves 
for the work before us. We were getting careless and confi- 
dent, and required correction. You must do all you can for our 
dear country. Pray for the aid of our dear Father in heaven, 
for our suffering soldiers and their distressed families. I pray 
day and night for you. May Almighty God guide, guard, and 
protect you ! I have but little time to write, my dear daughter. 
You must excuse my short and dull letters. Write me when 
you can, and love always your devoted father, 

"R. E. Lee." 

'No apology is needed for the introduction of the follow- 
ing letters. The publication of these expressions of his 
warm paternal affection (which has doubtless been purified 
and intensified in the brighter home above) will be par- 
doned in view of the light thus thrown on the character of 
the great soldier who, amid the stem realities and pressing 
duties of war, found time and inclination for family letters, 
of which these are but a few specimens : 

" Richmond, Va., April 26, 1862. 
" I have just received your note of Thursday night, dearest 
Chass, and write to say that I have taken time to read it and 
enjoy it, too, and shall always do so as long as 1 live. So do 
not hesitate to write. I want to see you very much, and am 
always thinking of you. It is very hard, I think, for you to say 

that you did not want to come to me. I hope, at least, F 

will be able to go to you, and, if he does, you must tell him to 
kiss you for me, double and treble. Do not accuse your mamma ; 
you told me yourself. You are such a little sieve, you cannot 
retain any thing. But there is no harm, you sweet child, and I 
love you all the more for it, and so does F . 



" I am glad you get such delightful tidings of him. C 

left him yesterday, very indignant at some of his pickets having 
been captured. I hope he will get them back, and indemnify 
himself with many of the enemy. He is very well, but sent no 



390 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

particular messages. I am glad you rejoice in the good service 
he is doing his country. Encourage him to continue to the end. 
We have received some heavy blows lately, from the effects of 
vphich, I trust, a merciful God will deliver us. I fear New 
Orleans has fallen, though nothing certain has yet been received. 
Tlie last accounts received prepare me for its fall. Remember 
me to your grandpapa and all, at Hickory Hill. Kass my grand- 
son for me, and tell him you are mistaken. I want to do so for 
myself very much, but do not know when I can have that pleas- 
ure. I must confess that I desire more to kiss his mother ; but 

I catch that from F . Good-by, my sweet daughter. May 

Heaven guard and protect you and yours, prays 

" Your affectionate father, R. E. Lee." 

" Near Richmond, Va., June 2, 1862. 
" You may have heard that a battle has been fought near 
Richmond, my darling Chass, and be uneasy about your hus- 
band. I write, therefore, to inform you that he is well. The 
cavalry was not engaged, and, of course, he was not exposed. 
... I am sorry to say that General Johnston was wounded 
Saturday evening, not seriously, I am told ; but, when I left 
Richmond yesterday, the extent of his wound was not known. 
... I am now in the field again. The wound of General 
Johnston obliging him to leave it, rendered it necessary, in 
the opinion of the President, that I should take his place. I 
wish his mantle had fallen upon an abler man, or that I were 
able to drive our enemies back to their homes. I have no am- 
bition and no desire but for the attainment of this object, and 
therefore only wish for its accomplishment by him that can do 

it most speedily and thoroughly. I saw F Friday. Was at 

his camp. . . . He is well, and so are Shiloh, Moses, etc. I told 
him about you, and gave him your address. He said he would 
write. I hear nothing of your poor mamma, or the White 
House. Kiss Agnes for me ; also, your fine boy. I wrote to 
both of you some days since — but I can do nothing but think of 
you. God bless you both and all, and keep you for Himself, 
now and forever ! Your affectionate father, 

" Mrs. Charlotte Lee. R- E. Lee." 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 391 

"Dabb's, June 22, 1862. 
" I must take a part of this holy day, my dearest Chass, to 
thank you for your letter of the 14th. I am very glad that my 
communication after the battle reached you so opportunely, and 

relieved your anxiety about your F . He has, since that, 

made a hazardous scout, and been protected by that Divine 
Providence which, I trust and pray, may always smile on, as I 
know it will ever watch over, you and yours. I sent you some 
account of this expedition in a former letter, as well as the order 
of General Stuart on the subject. It was badly printed, but 
many serve to show you that he conducted himself well. The 
general deals in the flowery style, as you will perceive, if you 
ever see his report in detail ; but he is a good soldier, and speaks 
highly of the conduct of the two Lees, who, as far as I can learn, 
deserve his encomiums. Your mamma is very zealous in her 
attentions to your sick brother. He is reported better. I think 
he was a few evenings since, when I saw him, and a note this 
morning from her states that he slowly improves. I hope he 
will soon be well again. He is much reduced, and looks very 
feeble. I suppose he will be obliged to go to the ' North Caro- 
lina White Sulphur,' to keep you young women company. How 
will you like that ? And now I must answer your inquiries 
about myself. My habiliments are not as comfortable as yours, 
nor so suited to this hot weather ; but they are the best I have. 
My coat is of gray, of the regulation style and pattern, and my 
pants of dark blue, as is also prescribed, partly hid by my long 
boots. I have the same handsome hat which surmounts my 
gray head (the latter is not prescribed in the regulations), and 
shields my ugly face, which is masked by a white beard as stiff 
and wiry as the teeth of a card. In fact, an uglier person you 
have never seen, and so unattractive is it to our enemies that 
they shoot at it whenever visible to them. But, though age 
with its snow has whitened my head, and its frosts have stiff- 
ened my limbs, my heart, you well know, is not frozen to you, 
and summer returns when I see you. Having now answered 
your questions, I have little more to say. Our enemy is quietly 
working within his lines, and collecting additional forces to drive 
us from our capital. I hope we shall be able yet to disappoint 



392 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

him, and drive him back to his own country. I saw F the 

other day. He was looking very well in a new suit of gray. . . . 
" And now I must bid you farewell. Kiss your sweet boy 
for me, and love always 

" Your devoted papa, R. E. Lee. 

"Mrs. William H. Fitzhugh Lee." 

" Jeffersonton, Auffzist 26, 1862. 

"I arrived at my tent last night, my dear Chass, and to 

my delight found your F . It was the first time I had 

seen him since the battles around Richmond. He is very well, 
and the picture of health. He could not stay very long, as he 
had to return to his camp, about four miles distant. In the 
recent expedition to the rear of the enemy (with a view of cut- 
ting off their railroad communication), he led his regiment, dur- 
ing a terrible storm at night, right tlirough the camp of the 
enemy to Catlett's Station, capturing several hundred prisoners 

and some valuable papers of General Pope. His cousin L. M 

is said to have escaped at the first onset, leaving his toddy un- 
touched. 

" I am so grateful to Almighty God for preserving, guiding, 
and directing him in this war ! Help me pray to Him for the 

continuance of his signal favor. F left me a letter of M. 

L 's to read. It is so full of sympathy, piety, and affection, that 

I inclose it to you. I sent you several messages in a letter to 
your mother yesterday. Kiss her for me. I have heard from 
neither of you since I left R . 

" Give much love to everybody, and believe me, my dear 
child, 

" Affectionately your father, R. E. Lee." 

After the burning of the White House in June, 1862, 
Mrs. Lee and her daughters occupied a rented house on 
Franklin Street, in Richmond, which is now pointed out as 
an object of interest to the tourist. 

It is needless to say that they bore their full share of 
the privations, sacrifices, and untiring devotion to the cause 
of the Confederacy, which so preeminently characterized the 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 393 

women of Eiclimond during those dark days. Mrs. Lee 
busied herself knitting socks for the soldiers, or going as an 
" angel of mercy " to the sick and wounded of the hospitals, 
and her daughters proved themselves worthy of their illus- 
trious father and gallant brothers. 

Many an humble soldier cherishes to-day as among his 
most hallowed memories acts of kindness which he received 
from the family of his loved chieftain. 

General Lee's family letters at this period continued to 
be of deepest interest. 

He wrote the following to a daughter within the enemy's 
lines: 

"Camp near Fredericksrurg, November 24, 1862. 
" My dear Daughter : I have just received your letter of 
the 17th, which lias afforded me great gratification. I regretted 
not finding you in Richmond, and grieve over every opportunity 
of seeing you that is lost, for I fear they will become less and 
less frequent. I am glad, however, that you have been able to 
enjoy the society of those who are so well qualified to render 
you happy, and who are so deservedly loved and admired. The 
death of my dear Annie was indeed to me a bitter pang. But 
the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken awa}' ; blessed be the 
name of the Lord. In the hours of night, when there is nothing 
to lighten the full weight of my grief, I feel as if I should be 
overwhelmed. I had always counted, if God should spare me a 
few days of peace after this cruel war was ended, that I should 
have her with me. But year after year my hopes go out, and I 
must be resigned. I write with difficulty, and must be brief. 

F and R are near me and well. Nephew F has laid 

aside his crutches, and I hope will soon join me. Your mother, 
I presume, informs you of the rest. General Burnside's whole 
army is apparently opposite Fredericksburg, and stretches from 
the Rappahannock to the Potomac. What his intentions are he 
has not yet disclosed. I am sorry he is in position to oppress 
our friends and citizens of the ' Northern Neck.' He threatens 
to bombard Fredericksburg, and the noble spirit displayed by its 
citizens, particularly the women and children, has elicited my 



394 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

highest admiration. They have been abandoning their homes 
night and day, during all of this inclement weather, cheerfully 
and uncomplainingly, with only such assistance as our wagons 
and ambulances could afford — women, girls, and children, trudg- 
ing through the mud, and bivouacking in the open field. . . . 
" Believe me always your aflfectionate father, 

"R. E. Lee." 

The daughter, whose death is so toucliingly alluded to in 
the above letter, was Miss Annie Carter Lee, who died at 
"WaiTen White Sulphur Springs, IT. C, the 20th of October, 
1862. At the close of the war the citizens of the county 
erected over her grave a handsome monument, which was 
unveiled with appropriate ceremonies. In response to an 
invitation to be present, General Lee wrote the following 
chai*acteristic letter : 

"Rockbridge Baths, July 25, 1866. 

" Ladies : I have read with deep emotion your letter of the 
17th inst., inviting myself and family to witness the erection of 
a monument over the remains of my daughter at Warren White 
Sulphur Springs on the 8th of next month. 

" I do not know how to express to you my thanks for your 
great kindness to her while living, and for your affectionate 
remembrance of her since dead. 

"My gratitude for your attention and consideration will 
continue through life, and my prayers will be daily offered to 
the throne of the Most High for his boundless blessings upon 
you. 

" I have always cherished the intention of visiting the tomb 
of her who never gave me aught but pleasure ; but, to afford me 
the satisfaction which I crave, it must be attended with more 
privacy than I can hope for on the occasion you propose. 

"But there are more controlling considerations which will 
prevent my being present. Her mother, who for years has 
been afflicted with a painful disease, which has reduced her to a 
state of helplessness, is this far on her way to the Mineral 
Springs, which are considered the best calculated to afford her 
'relief. My attendance is necessary to her in her journey, and 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 395 

the few weeks I have now at my disposal is the only time which 
can be devoted to this purpose. 

" Though absent in person, my heart will be with you, and 
my sorrow and devotions will be mingled with yours. 

" I hope my eldest son and daughter may be able to be 
present with you, but, as they are distant from me, I cannot tell 
under what circumstances your invitation may find them. I feel 
certain, however, that nothing but necessity will prevent their 
attendance. 

" I inclose, according to your request, the date of my daugh- 
ter's birth, and the inscription proposed for the monument over 
her tomb. The latter are the last lines of the hymn which she 
asked for just before her death. 

" I am, with great respect, your obedient servant, 

"R. E. Lee. 
" Mrs. Joseph S. Jones, Mrs. Thomas Carroll, Miss Brownlow, Miss M. Alston, 

Mrs. J. M. Heck, Mrs. Lucinda Jones — Committee." 

The date of the following letter gives it additional inter- 
est. The movements of Burnside were developing them- 
selves, and the sanguinary battle of Fredericksburg was about 
to open ; but the charger of the great captain must " wait at 
his tent-door " while from a heart as tender as that of the 
gentlest woman he sends these lines of affectionate sympathy 
to the bereaved mother : 

"Camp Fredericksburg, December 10, 1862. 
" I heard yesterday, my dear daughter, with the deepest sor- 
row, of the death of your infant. I was so grateful at her birth. 
I felt that she would be such a comfort to you, such a pleasure 
to my dear Fitzhugh, and would fill so full the void still aching 
in your hearts. But you have now two sweet angels in heaven. 
What joy there is in the thought! What relief to your grief! 
What suffering and sorrow they have escaped ! I can say noth- 
ing to soften the anguish you must feel, and I know you are as- 
sured of my deep and affectionate sympathy. May God give 
you strength to bear the affliction He has imposed, and pro- 
duce future joy out of your present niisery, is my earnest 
prayer. 



396 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" I saw F yesterday. He is well, and wants much to see 

you. "When you are strong enough, cannot you come up to 
Hickory Hill, or your grandpa's, on a little visit, when he can 
come down and see you? My horse is waiting at my tent,- 
door, but I could not refrain from sending these few lines to re- 
call to you the thought and love of 

" Your devoted father, R. E. Lee. 

" Mrs. Wm. H. FiTZHtJGH Lee." 

" Camp Fredericksbdrg, March 3, 1863. 
" I received to-day, my darling daughter, your letter of the 
28th, and it has furnished me such pleasing thoughts ! I am 

glad you are so well and happy. Tell F I know you ' look 

very well,' and, more than that, you look beautiful, and that he 

must answer all your questions, and R must drive you out 

every day. You and that 3'oung bride must make fine company 
for each other, affording each other so much time for fruitful 
thought, and, when you do speak, always on the same subject, 
your husbands. How deluded each must appear to the other ! 
As to F , the Misses H need take no credit to them- 
selves for perceiving his condition. It is patent to all the world, 
and requires no Columbus to discover it. Tell him that he must 
look at you as much as he can, and be with you as much as he 
can, for the spring is approaching, and we have a great deal be- 
fore us. I am glad you have had this opportunity to be to- 
gether, and hope the war with all its baneful effects will always 
be removed far from you. It is strange, though, that nobody 
writes to you now. You are both such good correspondents 
that I should think you would be overwhelmed with letters. 
Your mamma says neither of you ever writes to her. But I tell 
her it is the fault of the mails. Your poor mamma has been 
a great sufferer this winter. I have not been able to see her, 
and fear I shall not. She talks of coming to Hickory Hill this 
month, when the weather becomes more fixed. We are up to 
our eyes in mud, now, and have but little comfort. Mr. Hooker 
looms very large over the river. He has two balloons up in the 
day, and one at night. I hope he is gratified at what he sees. 
Tour cousin, Fitz Lee, beat up his quarters the other day with 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 397 

about four hundx'ed of his cavalry, and advanced within four 
miles of Falmouth, carrying off one hundred and fifty prisoners, 
with their horses, arms, etc. The day after he recrossed the 
Rappahannock, they sent all their cavalry after him, and even 
brought Sir Percy Wyndham and his three regiments from 
Chantilly down upon him ; but the bird had flown. It was re- 
ported that they displayed ten thousand cavalry — I suppose 
half that number would be nearer the truth. I hope these 

young Lees will alwaj^s be too smart for the enemy. Kiss F 

for me, and give much love to R . I pray daily to our 

heavenly Father to guard, guide, and protect you all. Tell 

F I will not write to him this time. It is so dark I can 

hardly see. I am obliged to him for his letter. 

" Your devoted papa, R. E. Lee." 

The following is without date, but was evidently written 
about this time : 

" My dear Fitzhugh : . . . I wrote you a few lines the 
other day, and also to daughter Charlotte. Tell her she must 
talk quick to you. Her time is getting short, and the soldiers 
complain of the officers' wives visiting them when theirs can- 
not. I am petitioned to send them off. Your poor mother is, I 
fear, no better. I received yesterday a very pleasing letter 

from Rev. Dr. S , complimentary of precious . I have 

mailed it to your mother. Kiss Chass for me, and tell her that 
daughters are not prohibited from visiting their papas. It is 
only objected to wives visiting their husbands. But she and 

Mrs. R are not included in the prohibition. Your uncle 

Carter says that they had him, with a gun and sword buckled to 
him, guarding a ford on James River during Stoneraan's last 
expedition. You and Fitz must not let them capture your 
uncle. I wish I could have seen your review ; I hope Chass did. 

" Affectionately your father, R. E. Lee. 

" General Wm. Fitzhcgh Lee." 

The tAvo following letters were written on the occasion of 
tlie wounding of his son in the severe cavalry-fight of Brandy 
Station : 



398 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 



" My dear Son : I send you a dispatch received from C 

last night. I hope you are comfortable this morning. I wish I 
could see you, but I cannot. Take care of yourself, and make 
haste and get well, and return. Though I scarcely ever saw 
you, it was a great comfort to know that you were near and 
with me. I could think of you and hope to see you. May we 
yet meet in peace and happiness ! Kiss Chass for me. Tell her 
she must not tease you while you are sick, and she must write 
and let me know how you are. God bless you both, my children ! 
" Truly your father, R. E. Lee." 

" CuLPEPER, June 11, 1863. 
" I am so grieved, my dear daughter, to send Fitzhugh to 
you wounded. But I am so grateful that his wound is of a 
character to give us full hope of a speedy recovery. With his 
youth and strength to aid him, and your tender care to nurse 
him, I trust he will soon be well again. I know that you will 
unite with me in thanks to Almighty God, who has so often 
shielded him in the hour of danger, for this recent deliverance, 
and lift up your whole heart in praise to Him for sparing a life 
so dear to us, while enabling him to do his duty in the station 
in which He had placed him. Ask him to join us in supplica- 
tion, that He may always cover him with the shadow of His al- 
mighty arm, and teach him that his only refuge is in Him, the 
greatness of whose mercy reacheth unto the heavens, and His 
truth unto the clouds. As some good is always mixed with the 
evil in this world, you will now have him with you for a time, 
and I shall look to you to cure him very soon, and send him 
back to me ; for, though I saw him seldom, I knew he was near, 
and always hoped to see him. I went to-day to thank Mrs. 
Hill for her attention to him and kindness to you. She desired 
me to give her regards to you both. I must now thank you 
for the letter you wrote to me while at Fredericksburg. I kept 
it by me till preparing for the battle-field, when, fearing it 
might reach the eyes of General Hooker, I destroyed it. We 

can carry with us only our recollections. I must leave F 

to tell you about the battle, the army, and the country. . . . 
Tell Cousin A I am rejoiced that W is unhurt, though 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 399 

pretty S might like to see the ambulance driving up again. 

I want all the husbands in the field, and their wives at home 
encouraging them, loving them, and praying for them. We 
have a great work to accomplish, which requires the cordial and 

united strength of all. . . . Give much love to Cousin A , 

Mrs. L and her sweet children, Mr. W , and my dear 

Uncle W . Tell F he must make haste and get well — 

that I am sad without him. You and R must let me know 

how he gets on. 

" Truly and affectionately yours, R. E. Lee." 

While slowly recovering from tliis wound, the son was 
captured by a raiding-party of the enemy and carried to 
prison. General Lee wrote the following letter soon after 
this event : 

" Camp Culpeper, July 26, 1863, 
" I received last night, m}' darling daughter, your letter of 
the 18th from Hickory Hill. I was also glad to hear from 

M S that you accompanied your mother from Ashland 

on the 22d — I presume on your way to the Alum Springs. I 
hope the water and mountain air will invigorate you and make 

you well. You must not be sick while F is away, or he 

will be more restless under his separation. Get strong and 
hearty by his return, that he may the more rejoice at the sight 
of you. *You give such an account of yourself that I scarcely 
recognize you. What sort of a closet is that to which you com- 
pare yourself? I see no resemblance, and will have none. I 

can appreciate your distress at F 's situation. I deeply 

sympathize with it, and in the lone hours of the night I groan 
in sorrow at his captivity and separation from you. But we 
must all bear it, exercise all our patience, and do nothing to 
aggravate the evil. This, besides injuring ourselves, would re- 
joice our enemies, and be sinful in the eyes of God. In His 
own good time He will relieve us, and make all things work to- 
gether for our good, if we give Him our love, and place in Him 
our trust. I can see no harm that will result from F 's cap- 
ture except his detention. I feel assured that he will be well 
attended to. He will be in the hands of old army officers and 



400 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

surgeons, most of whom are men of principle and humanity. 
His wound, I understand, has not been injured by his removal, 
but is doing well. Nothing would do him more harm than for 
him to learn that you were sick and sad. How could he get well ? 
So cheer up, and prove your fortitude and patriotism. What, 
too, should I do ? I cannot bear to think of you except as I 
have always known you — bright, joyous, and happy. You may 

think of F , and love him as much as you please, but do not 

grieve over him or grow sad. That will not be right, you 
precious child ! I hope I shall be able to see you on your re- 
turn from the Springs, and be able to welcome F , too. I 

miss him very much, and want his assistance, too. Perhaps I 
should have been able to have done better in Pennsylvania if 
he had been with me. . . . General Stuart is as dashing as 

ever. Colonel Chambliss commands F 's brigade now. The 

cavalry has had hard service, and is somewhat pulled down. 
But We shall build it up now. It has lost some gallant officers, 
which causes me deep grief. Indeed, the loss of our gallant 
officers and men throughout the army causes me to weep tears 
of blood, and to wish that I never could hear the sound of a gun 
again. My only consolation is, that they are the happier, and 
we that are left are to be pitied. 

" I am sorry for the disappointment I caused you by return- 
ing to Virginia, but under the circumstances it was the best to 
be done. Had not the Shenandoah been so high, I shbuld have 
gone into Loudon ; but, being unable to cross it, I determined 
to come here. You must think of me, and pray for me always, 
and know that I am always thinking of you. I am so sorry that 
the enemy treated my dear Uncle Williams so badly. I also 

grieve at not seeing M . Good-by, my dear child. May 

God in His great mercy guard and protect you, and your dear 
husband ! I saw Mrs. Hill to-day, and she inquired very kindly 

after you and F . 

" Your affectionate papa, R. E. Lee." 

The hopes expressed in the above letter were sadly 
bliglited. The husband lingered in a wearisome captivity 
at Fortress Monroe, the accomplished wife died before his 



UIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 401 

release, and the father was plunged into deepest grief. He 
wrote the following letter soon after the son's return from 
prison : 

" Camp Orangk County, April 24, 1804. 
" I received last night, my dear son, your letter of the 22d. 
It has given nie great comfort. God knows how I loved your 
dear, dear wife, how sweet her memory is to me, and how I 
mourn her loss. My grief could not be greater if you had been 
taken from me. You* were both equally dear to me. My heart 
is too full to speak on this subject, nor can I write. But my 
grief is for ourselves, not for her. She is brighter and happier 
than ever — safe from all evil, and awaiting us in her heavenly 
abode. May God in His mercy enable us to join her in eternal 
praise to our Lord and Saviour. Let us humbly bow our- 
selves before Him, and offer perpetual prayer for pardon and 
forgiveness. But we cannot indulge in grief, however mourn- 
fully pleasing. Our country demands all our strength, all our 
energies. To resist the powerful combination now forming 
against us will require every man at his place. If victorious, we 
have every thing to hope for in the future. If defeated, nothing 
will be left us to live for. I have not heard what action has 
been taken by the department in reference to my recommenda- 
tions concerning the organization of the cavalry. But we have 
no time to wait, and you had better join your brigade. This 
week will in all probability bring us active work, and we must 
strike fiist and strong. My whole trust is in God, and I am 
ready for whatever He may ordain. May He guide, guard, and 
strengthen us, is my constant prayer ! 

" Your devoted father, R. E. Lee. 

" General William F. Lee." 

The above letter, written on the eve of the great cam- 
paign of 1864, is the last I shall introduce of his family 
letters written during the war. 

His wife and daughters continued to reside inEiclimond, 
where he joined them after the surrender. A few weeks 
later he escaped the publicity of a residence in Richmond, 
26 



402 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

wliich was at that time so anuojing to liim, and sought a 
quiet home in Cumberland County — two of his sons having 
gone to farm the plantations at the White House and Konan- 
cocke. The following letter gives an inside view of his 
f eehngs and purposes at this time : 

"Near Cakterstille, Cumberland County, Va., July 29, 1865. 

" My dear Fitzhugh : I was very glad to receive by the 
last packet from Richmond your letter of' the 22d. We had all 
been quite anxious to hear from you, and were much gratified 
to learn that you were all well, and doing well. It is very 
cheering to me to hear of your good prospects for corn, and 
your cheerful prospects for the future. God grant they may be 
realized, which, I am sure, they will be, if you will unite sound 
judgment to your usual energy in your operations. 

" As to the indictments, I hope you, at least, may not be 
prosecuted. I see no more reason for it than for prosecuting all 
who ever engaged in the war. I think, however, we may expect 
procrastination in measures of relief, denunciatory threats, etc. 
We must be patient, and let them take their course. As soon 
as I can ascertain their intention toward me, if not prevented, I 
shall endeavor to procure some humble but quiet abode for your 
mother and sisters, where I hope they can be happy. As I be- 
fore said, I want to get in some grass country, where the natural 
product of the land will do much for my subsistence. . . . 

" Our neighbors are very kind, and do every thing in the 
world to promote our comfort. If A is well enough, I pro- 
pose next week to ride up to Bremo. I wish I was near enough 

to see you. Give much love to R , and J , the C s, 

and B s. All here unite in love and best wishes for you all. 

" Most affectionately, your father, R. E, Lee." 

Kot long after General Lee assumed charge of Wash- 
ington College, his family removed to Lexington, and occu- 
pied a house on the college campus until the new president's 
house was built. 

It was ray privilege to see much of his " domestic Hfe " 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 403 

in Lexington, to liave been the frequent inmate of his model 
home, and to have seen him in the pleasant intercourse of 
the family circle. 

And, while I may not violate the confidence reposed in 
me, or expose to the public gaze the privacy of that home, I 
may say that, if one wanted to paint a model husband and 
father, he would search the world in vain for a brighter 
example than that of this great man. Whether, with 
affectionate playfulness, teasing his daughters, tenderly 
wheeling Mrs. Lee (who had become a confirmed invalid) in 
her chair, or providing in other ways for her comfort, or 
entertaining his visitors with that inimitable courtesy and 
grace which seemed inseparable from the man, he always 
won your admiration, and made you feel that he was the very 
embodiment of all the virtues of the domestic circle. 

Of Mrs. Lee it may be truly said that she was worthy to 
grace the home and cheer the eventful life of this king of 
men. Though rendered by sickness incapable of walking, 
and never free from pain, she bore her sufferings with 
Christian cheerfulness, and always seemed contented and 
happy. Yery domestic in her tastes and habits, and of un- 
conquerable industry, she would paint, knit, sew, write, or 
entertain her friends, and was an earnest worker for all of 
the interests of her Church, as she was a liberal contributor 
to every charity that presented itself. Noted for her ex- 
traordinary common-sense and sound judgment — thoroughly 
educated and very accomplished — fond of reading, and re- 
markably well read in general literature — a fine conversa- 
tionalist and a most genial, pleasant entertainer — in a word, 
a Virginia matron of the old school — she combined domestic 
virtues worthy to link together the families of Washington 
and Lee, was the light and joy of her home, and the recog- 
nized leader of the social circle of Lexington. The friend of 
the poor, she was beloved by all, and her death last year ex- 
cited in the community a sorrow such as it had not experi- 
enced since General Lee died. 



404 REMIXISCEXCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

The feelings witli wliicli General Lee entered upon liis 
new work, and established in this mountain town his new 
home, may be gathered from the following extract from a 
letter to his son, dated October 30, 18G5 : 

" I was delighted to receive, by the last mail, your letter of 
the 17th inst. Your affection is a great comfort to me, and the 
prospect of your society in my declining years has always been 
to me a source of great pleasure. I accepted the presidency of 
the college in the hope that I might be of some service to the 
country, and the rising generation, and not from any preference 
of my own. I should have selected a more quiet life, and a 
more retired abode than Lexing-ton, and should have preferred a 
small farm where I could have earned my daily bread. If I find 
I can accomplish no good here, I will then endeavor to pursue 
the course to which my inclinations point. The people have 
been very considerate and kind to me, and do every thing to pro- 
mote my comfort, and so far the classes are studying remarka- 
bly well." 

, The following letter to one of his old servants illustrates 
his kindly feeling for his domestics, which might be treated 
of at length. Never did servants have kinder master, or one 
who provided better for their comfort and happiness : 

"Lexington, Va., March 9, 1866, 
"Amanda Parks. 

" Amanda : I have received your letter of the 27th ult,, and 
regret very much that I did not see you when I was in Wash- 
ington. I heard, on returning to my room Sunday night, that 
you had been to see me, and I was sorry to have missed you, 
for I wished to learn how you were, and how all the people 
from Arlington were getting on in the world. My interest in 
them is as great now as it ever was, and I sincerely wish for 
their happiness and prosperity. At the period specified in Mr. 
Custis's will, five years from the time of his death, I caused the 
liberation of all the people at Arlington, as well as those at the 
White House and Romancocke, to be recorded in the Hustings 
Court at Richmond, and letters of manumission to be given to 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 4G5 

those, with whom I could communicate, who desired them. In 
consequence of the war which then existed, I could do nothing 
more for them. 

" I do not know why you should ask if I am angry with you. 
I am not aware of your having done any thing to give me of- 
fense, and hope you would not say or do what was wrong. 
While you lived at Arlington you behaved very well, and were 
attentive and faithful to your duties. I hope you will always 
conduct yourself in the same manner. Wishing you health, 
happiness, and success in life, 

" I am, very truly, 
(Signed) "R. E. Lee." 

The following throws additional light on his life and feel- 
ings : 

" Lexington, Va., February 26, 1867. 
" My deab Son : You must not think, because I write so 
seldom, that you are absent from my thoughts. I think of you 
constantly, and am ever revolving in my mind all that concerns 
you. I have an ardent desire to see you reestablished at your 
home, and enjoying the pleasure of prosperity around you. I 
know this cannot be accomplished at once, but must come from 
continuous labor, economy, and industry, and be the result of 
years of good management. We have now nothing to do but 
to attend to our material interests, which, collectively, will ad- 
vance the interests of the State, and to await events. The domi- 
nant party cannot reign forever, and truth and justice will at 

last prevail. I hope I can get down to see you and R during 

the next vacation. I shall then have a more correct apprehen- 
sion of existing circumstances, and can follow your progress 
more satisfactorily. I was very much obliged to you for the 
nice eye-glasses you sent me Christmas, and asked your mother 
and the girls to thank you for them, which I hope they did ; I 
fear they are too nice for my present circumstances. . . . We 

have all now to confine ourselves strictly to our necessities 

I wish I was nearer to 3'ou all. M is still in Baltimore, 

though she contemplates leaving there soon and going to Nor- 
folk. She speaks also of halting at B on her way to Rich- 



406 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

moud. All here unite in much love. Your mother is about the 
same — busy with her needle and her pen, and as cheerful as 
ever. C — — has not been well of late, but I hope he is now 
better ; and the girls are quite well. Your friends in town fre- 
quently inquire after you, and will be glad to see you again. 
" Affectionately, your father, R. E. Lee." 

A number of his letters, expressing his delight at his 
son's contemplated marriage, giving vivid pictures of home- 
life at Lexington, and kindly and most sensible advice about 
the details of farming, etc., would be of deep interest to the 
reader, but may not be inserted because of their personal 
reference to individuals who ai-e still, fortunately, living. 

I will, however, give the following extracts fi-om other 
letters. In a letter dated December 21, 1867, he thus al- 
ludes to his visit to Petersburg to attend his son's marriage : 

" My visit to Petersburg was extremely pleasant. Besides 
the pleasure of seeing my daughter, and being with you, which 
was very great, I was gratified in seeing so many old friends. 

' " When our army was in front of Petersburg, I suffered so 
much in body and mind on account of the good townspeople, 
especially on that gloomy night when I was forced to abandon 
them, that I have always reverted to them in sadness and sor- 
row. My old feelings returned to me as I passed well-remem- 
bered spots, and recalled the ravages of hostile shot and shell. 
But, when I saw the cheerfulness with which the people were 
working to restore their fortunes, and witnessed the comforts 
with which they were surrounded, a cloud of sorrow which had 
been pressing upon me for years was lifted from my heart. 

" This is bad weather for completing your house, but it will 
soon pass away, and your sweet helpmate will make every thing 
go smoothly. When the spring opens, and the mocking-birds 
resume their song, you will have much to do, so you must pre- 
pare in time. ..." 

In a letter to the same, under date of March 30, 1S68, he 
pleasantly says : 



HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. 407 

" I am very glad that you are so pleased with your house. I 
think it must be my daughter that gives it such a charm. I am 
sure that she will make every thing look bright to me. It is a 
good thing that the wheat is doing so well, for I am not sure 
that — 

' The flame jou are so rich in 
Will light a fire in the kitchen, 
Nor the little god turn the spit, spit, spit.' 

Some material aliment is necessary to make it burn brightly, 
and furnish some good dishes for the table. Shad are good in 
their way, but they do not swim up the Pamunkey all the year." 

The quotations from his family letters will be concluded 
with the following, written just before liis trip South the 
spring before his death : 

" Lexington Va., March 22, ISYO. 

" My deae Fitzhugh : Your letter of the 17th instant has 
been received. Lest I should appear obstinate if not perverse, 
I have yielded to the kind importunity of my physicians, and of 
the Faculty, to take a trip toward the South. In pursuance of 
my resolution, I expect to leave here Thursday next in the pack- 
et-boat, and hope to arrive in Richmond Friday afternoon. I 
shall take Agnes with me as my companion (she has been my 
kind and uncomplaining nurse), and, if we could only get down 
to you that evening, we would do so, for I want to see you, my 
sweet daughter, and dear grandson. But as the doctors think 
it important that I should reach a southern climate as soon as 
practicable, 1 fear I shall have to leave my visit to you till my 
return. I shall go first to Warrenton Springs, North Carolina, 
to visit the grave of my dear Annie, where I have always 
promised myself to go, and I think if I am to accomplish it I 
have no time to lose. I wish to witness her quiet sleep, with 
her dear hands crossed over her breast, as it were, in mute 
prayer, undisturbed by her distance from us, and to feel that 
her pure spirit is roaming in bliss in the land of the blessed. 

"From there, according to my feelings, I shall either go 
down to Norfolk or to Savannah, and take you, if practicable, on 
my retm-n. . . . We are all as usual. Your mother still talks 



408 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

of visiting you, and, when I urge her to make preparations for 
her journey, she replies, rather disdainfully, that she has none 

to make, they have been made years ago. C and M 

are well, and M writes that she will be back by the 1st of 

April. We are having beautiful weather now, which I hope 
may continue. I am so tired sitting at my table that I must 
conclude. Love to all, from 

" Your affectionate father, R. E. Lee." 

Many other letters of similar character might be given, 
and mucli more might be written on the domestic life of 
this great and good man ; but the above must suffice. The 
home circle has been, alas ! sadly broken. The illustrious 
head of the house — ^the noble matron who shared his joys 
and sorrows — the accomplished daughters who were indeed a 
light and a joy in the home — come not back to their accus- 
tomed places, and there are vacant chairs, and missing forms, 
and silent voices, whicb tell of a desolated hearthstone and a 
broken family circle. Father, mother, and daughter, rest to- 
gether beneath the college chapel at Lexington, while the 
noble women of the old North State guard the resting-place 
of the other. But their pure spirits bask in the sunlight of the 
brighter home above, and await the day when, in one of those 
mansions which Jesus went to prepare, the home circle shall 
be reunited, and the "domestic life" \)Q joyous forever. 



CHAPTER XI. 

HIS LOVE FOK CHILDKEN. 

Ko record of General Lee's cliaracter would be complete 
without some mention of his marked fondness for children, 
and the incidents illustrating this are so numerous that I am 
at a loss to know which to recite. 

On the morning of July 4, 1861, little Henry T (a 

bright little boy of five, and an enthusiastic Confederate) 
went with his father to call on General Lee at his headquar- 
ters in Richmond, and to present him with a handsome copy 
of the Bible in four volumes. 

One of the staff met them at the door and reported that 
the general was too busy to see them ; but, when the great 
chieftain heard the prattle of the little boy, he called to his 
aide to admit them. 

Receiving them with great cordiality, he accepted the 
gift of the Bible with evident gratification, and was fondling 
the little boy on liis knee, when the father inconsiderately 
asked Henry, " What is General Lee going to do with Gen- 
eral Scott?" 

The little fellow, who had caught some of the slang of 
the camp, and fully entered into the confident spirit which 
we all had in those early days of the war, instantly replied, 
" He is going to whip him out of his hreeches ! " 

General Lee's voice and manner instantaneously changed, 
and, lifting Henry down, he stood him up between his knees, 
and, looking him fuU in the face, said, with great gravity : 



410 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" My dear little boy, you should not use such expressions ; 
war is a serious matter, and General Scott is a great and 
good soldier. None of us can tell what the result of this 
contest will be." 

A few days after this, General Lee rode out to pay a 
special visit to little Henry. He told him that he wished to 
make him some return for his present ; that he was very much 
•pleased at such a gift from a little boy, and that he could not 
have given him cmy thing which he would have prized so 
highly as the Holy Bible, especially in so convenient a form. 
He then handed him a copy of Mr. Custis's " Eecollections 
of General Washington," edited by Mrs. Lee, in which he 
had written his own name and its presentation to Henry. 

It is hard to say whether the boy was most delighted 
with the visit or the book, or with being placed by the gen- 
eral in his saddle on the back of "Kichmond," the horse 
he then rode. 

While at Petersburg in the winter of 1864 he attended 
preaching one day at a crowded chapel, and noticed a little 
girl, dressed in faded garments, standing just inside the door 
and timidly looking around for a seat. " Come with me, my 
little lady," said the great soldier, " and you shall sit by me." 
And taking the little girl by the hand he secured her a com- 
fortable seat at his side. 

Kev. W. H. Piatt, of • Louisville, who lived in Peters- 
burg dm'ing the war, gives the following : " One day in 
Richmond a number of little girls were rolling hoops on the 
sidewalk, when word was passed from one to another that 
General Lee was riding toward them. They all gathered 
into a still group to gaze upon one of whom they had heard 
so much, when, to their surprise, he threw his rein to his 
attending courier, dismounted, and kissed every one of them, 
and then, mounting, rode away, with the sunny smile of 
childhood in his heart and plans of great battles in his mind. 

" Once in Petersburg, he called to see a child in whom he 
felt a special interest, and finding her sick, begged to be 



HIS LOVE FOR CHILDREN. 411 

shown to her room. When the mother, who was at a neigh- 
bor's for a moment, came home, she found him by the bed- 
side of her sick child, ministering to her comfort and cheer- 
ing her with his words." 

In calling one day in Petersburg upon the accomplished 
lady of the gallant and lamented General A. P. Hill, his 
bright little girl met him at the door and exclaimed, with 
that familiarity which the kind-hearted old hero had taught 
her : " O General Lee, here is ' Bobby Lee ' (holding up a 
puppy) ; " do kiss him." 

The general pretended to do so, and the Httle creature 
was delighted. 

Many childi-en all through the land were named after 
him, and, instead of being annoyed by it, as some men of 
distinction have been, he seemed to regard it as a compli- 
ment, which he always acknowledged. The following are 
specimens of many similar letters : 

"Lexington, Va., May 29, 1866. 
" Mr. A. P. M , La Orange, Qa. {for Robert Lee M ). 

" Mt dear Young Feiend : I have just become acquainted 
with you, through a letter from your father, and hasten to ex- 
press the pleasure this knowledge gives me. I shall watch 
your future career with great interest, and pray that it may be 
one of great usefulness to your friends and to your country. 
That it may be so, listen to the teachings of your parents, obey 
their precepts, and from childhood to the grave pursue unswerv- 
ingly the path of honor and of truth. Above all things, learn at 
once to worship your Creator and to do His will as revealed in 
His Holy Book. 

" With much affection, I am your sincere friend, 
, (Signed) "RE. Lee." 

" Lexington, Va., August 29, ] 866. 

'•'■Mrs. Egbert W , Clarh County, Ind. . 

" I am much obliged to you for your letter of the 22d inst., 
and thank you sincerely for the kind feelings you express 
toward the people of the South. The compliment paid me by 



412 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

your brother-in-law, Mr. H , is highly appreciated, and I 

pray that his little son may be guided through life by a merci- 
ful Providence, and be led into the way of everlasting happiness. 
" I am, with great respect, R. E. Lee." 

One day, on the street in Lexington, a little girl of six 
summers was trying in vain to induce her younger sister to 
go home, when, seeing General Lee approaching, she ap- 
pealed to him with childlike simplicity : " O general ! Fanny 
won't go home — please, make her ! " 

The kind-hearted old hero could not resist this call of 
childhood, but with gentle persuasion induced the little girl 
to comply with her sister's request, and trudged back a 
quarter of a mile to lead the little ones by the hand, and en- 
joy their innocent prattle. 

The superintendent of one of the Sunday-schools of Lex- 
ington once offered a prize to the scholar who should bring 
into the school by a given time the largest number of new 
scholars, and the pastor of the church urged that they should 
not confine their efforts to the children, but should seek to 
bring in the old as well, since none were too wise to study 
God's word. A boy of five caught the spirit of the pastor's 
speech and went after his friend General Lee, to beg him to 
"go with me to our Sunday-school and be my new scholar." 
The little fellow was greatly disappointed when told that the 
general attended another church, and said with a deep sigh : 
" I am very sorry. I wish he belonged to our church, so that 
he could go to our Sunday-school and be my new scholar." 

The general was very much amused, and kindly answered 

his little friend : " Ah ! C , we must all tiy to be good 

Christians — that is the most important thing. I can't go»to 
your Sunday-school to be your new scholar to-day. But I 
am very glad that you asked me. It shows that you are 
zealous in a good cause, and I hope that you will continue to 
be so as you grow up. 

" And I do not want you to think that I consider my- 



HIS LOYE FOR CHILDREN. 413 

self too old to be a Snndaj-seliool scholar. No one ever be- 
comes too old to study the precious truths of the Bible." 

This last remark was evidently intended for several of 
the college students who were near by and listening with 
deep interest to the colloquy between the general and the 
young recruiting officer of the Sunday-school army. 

He knew all of the children m Lexington, and along the 
roads and by-paths of his daily rides, and it was pleasing to 
witness their delight when they met him. 

He could be seen at any time stopping on the streets to 
kiss some bright-eyed little girl, or pass a joke with some 
sprightly boy. 

One of these was accustomed to go to the chapel-service 
frequently and sit by the general, who treated him so cor- 
dially and kindly as to make him feel entirely at his ease, 
and give him the idea that wherever he saw General Lee his 
place was by his side. 

Accordingly, at the next college commencement, the little 
fellow stole away from his mother, and, before she was aware 
of it, was on the platform, sitting at the general's feet, gazing 
up into his face, utterly oblivious of the crowd, and entirely 
unconscious that lie was out of place. After remaining in 
this position for some time, receiving an occasional kind 
word from General Lee, he went fast to sleep, resting his 
head on the general's knees. The gi'eat man remained in 
one position for a long time, and put himself to considerable 
inconvenience and discomfort that he might not disturb the 
sleeping child. A distinguished lady present remarked that 
" this ^picture of helpless innocence confidingly resting on 
greatness formed a subject worthy of the greatest artist." 

At the Healing Springs in 1868 General Lee was one day 
sitting in the parlor, conversing with a number of ladies and 

children who had assembled to see him, when Frank S , 

a bright little fellow from Richmond, ran in from a romp on 
the lawn. Seeing a foot conveniently crossed, and belonging 
to a kind-looking old gentleman, he, without further cere- 



414 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

mony, mounted it for liis horse, and began to ride in ap- 
proved boy-fasliion, to the no small amusement of the com- 
pany and annoyance of the mother, who feared that General 
Lee would he displeased with so unwarrantable a liberty. 
But the general was delighted, and, after suffering the little 
fellow to ride to his heart's content, took him in his lap, and 
sought an introduction to the mother of his "merry little 
friend." 

In the summer of 186 Y General Lee, accompanied by one 
of his daughters, rode on horseback from Lexington to the 
Peaks of Otter. In a moimtain-defile, not far from a hum- 
ble home, they came suddenly upon some children who were 
playing near the road, and who began to scamper off on his 
approach. General Lee called them back, and asked : 

" Why are you running away ? Are you afraid of me ? " 

" Oh, no, sir ! " replied a little girl, " we are not afraid of 
you, but we are not dressed nice enough to see youP 

" Why, who do you think I am ? " 

" Tou are General Lee — we knew you by your picture." 

The admiration and love of the children for General Lee 
was not confined to those who met him. But his pictures are 
in every home in the South, and the children of city and 
mountain alike were taught to love him when living, and are 
now taught to cherish and revere his memory. The writer 
has never seen children manifest more sincere grief at the 
death of a near relative than that exhibited by the children 
of Lexington at the death of General Lee. 

The schools were all closed, their usual sports were aban- 
doned, and the children mingled their tears with those of 
strong men and women, as they realized that their kind, 
dearly-loved friend had gone from among them. And all 
over the South the weeping little ones attested how they 
loved the great chieftain who always had a pleasant smile 
and a kuid word for them. 



CHAPTER XII. 

HIS CHEISTIAJ^ CHARACTER. 

But I must pass by many other points of General Lee's 
character, and speak of him, in conclusion, as a Christian. 

In this age of hero-worship there is a tendency to exalt 
unduly the virtues of great men, and to magnify the reli- 
gious character of one professing to be a Christian. This is 
so well understood that there may be with those who never 
came in contact with this great man a lingering doubt as to 
the genuineness of his piety — a fear that, with him as with 
so many others, his profession of religion was merely nomi- 
nal. A few incidents, culled from the many that might be 
given, will serve to dissipate any such impression, and to 
show beyond all cavil that, with General Lee, ^dtal godliness 
was a precious reality. 

I can never forget my first interview and conversation 
with General Lee on religious matters. It was in 1863, while 
our army was resting along the Kapidan, soon after the 
Gettysburg campaign. Rev. B. T. Lacy and myself went, as 
a committee of our chaplain's association, to consult him in 
reference to the better observance of the Sabbath in the army, 
and especially to urge that something be done to prevent ir- 
religious otficers from converting Sunday into a grand gala- 
day for inspections, reviews, etc. It was a delicate mission. 
We did not wish to appear as either informers or officious 
intermeddlers, and yet we were very anxious to do something 
to further the wishes of those who sent us, and to put a stop 



416 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

to wliat was then a growing evil, and, in some commands, a 
serious obstacle to the efficient work of the chaplain. The 
cordial greeting which he gave us, the marked courtesy and 
respect with which he listened to what we had to say, and 
expressed his warm sympathy with the object of our mission, 
soon put us at our ease. But, as we presently began to an- 
swer his questions concerning the spiritual interests of the 
army, and to tell of that great revival which was then ex- 
tending through the camps, and bringing thousands of our 
noble men to Christ, we saw his eye brighten and his whole 
countenance glow with pleasure ; and as, in his simple, feeling 
words, he expressed his delight, we forgot the great warrior, 
and only remembered that we were communing with a hum- 
ble, earnest Christian. When Mr. Lacy told him of the deep 
interest wliich the chaplains felt in his welfare, and that their 
most fervent prayers were offered in his behalf, tears started 
in his eyes, as he replied : " I sincerely thank you for that, 
and I can only say that I am a poor sinner, trusting in 
Christ alone, and that I need all the prayers you can offer 
for me." 

"the next day he issued a beautiful address, in which 
he referred to his previous orders enjoining the observ- 
ance of the Sabbath — ordered that nothing should be done 
on the Lord's Day not absolutely necessary to the subsist- 
ence or safety of the army, directed that every facility 
should be given for religious services, and urged upon of- 
ficers and men regular attendance upon such services. He 
always set the example himself, and never failed to attend 
preaching when his duties did not absolutely preclude his 
doing so. Nor was he a mere listless attendant. The simple 
truths of the Gospel had no more attentive listener than Gen- 
eral Lee ; and his eye would kindle and his face glow under 
the more tender doctrines of grace. He used frequently to 
attend preaching at Jackson's headquarters ; and it was a 
scene which a master-hand might have delighted to paint — 
those two gi"eat warriors, surrounded by hundreds of their 



HIS CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 417 

^ officers and men, bowed in Imnible worship before the God 
and Saviour in whom they trusted. 

General Lee always took the deepest interest in the work 
of his chaplains and the spiritual welfare of his men. He 
was a frequent visitor at the chaplains' meetings, and a 
deeply-interested observer of their proceedings ; and the 
faithful chaplain who stuck to his post and did his duty 
could be always assured of a warm friend at headquarters. 

While the Anny of Northern Virginia confronted Gen- 
eral Meade at Mine E.un, near the end of November, 1863, 
and a battle was momentarily expected,. General Lee, with a 
number of general and staff officers, was riding down his line 
of battle, when, just in rear of General A. P. Hill's position, 
the cavalcade suddenly came upon a party of soldiers en- 
gaged in one of those prayer-meetings which they so often 
lield on the eve of battle. An attack from the enemy 
seemed imminent — already the sharp-shooting along the skir- 
mish-line had begun — the artillery was belching forth its 
hoarse thunder, and the mind and heart of the great chieftain 
were full of the expected combat. Yet, as he saw those 
ragged veterans bowed in prayer, he instantly dismounted, 
uncovered his head, and devoutly joined in the simple wor- 
ship. The rest of the party at once followed his example, 
and those humble privates found themselves leading the de- 
votions of their loved and honored chieftains. 

It is related that, as his army was crossing the James, in 
1864, and hurrying on to the defense of Petersburg, General 
Lee turned aside from the road, and, kneeling in the dust, 
devoutly joined a minister present in earnest prayer that 
God would give him. wisdom and grace in the new stage of 
the campaign upon which he was then entering. 

Eev. Dr. T. Y. Moore gave the following in his memo- 
rial seimon : 

" About the middle of the war, when the horizon looked 
veiy dark, I spent an evening with him, at the house of a 
friend, and he was evidently, in spite of his habitual self- 
27 



418 REMINISCENCES OP GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

command, deeply depressed. Happening to be alone with 
him as we parted for the night, I endeavored to cheer him 
with the fact that so many Christian people were praying 
for him. I shall never forget the emphasis with which he 
grasped my hand, as, with a voice and eye that betrayed 
deep emotion, he assured me that it was not only his com- 
fort, but his only comfort, and declared the simple and abso- 
lute trust that he had in God, and God alone, as his helper 
in that terrible struggle. Another incidetit impressed me 
still more, because it brought out a most beautiful trait in 
his character. No one ever rendered him a service, however 
humble, that was not instantly and gratefully acknowledged, 
however lowly the person might be. During the summer 
of 1864, after he had been holding at bay the tremendous 
forces of General Grant for long weeks, retreating step by 
step as he was outflanked by overwhelming numbers, until 
he reached the neighborhood of Cold Harbor, I had occasion 
to render him a slight service, so slight that, knowing at the 
time that he was sick, and overburdened with the great re- 
sponsibilities of his arduous and continually-menaced posi- 
tion, I never expected it to be acknowledged at all ; but, to 
my surprise, I received a letter thanking me for this trivial 
service, and adding : ' I thank you especially that I have a 
place in your prayers. Ko human power can avail us with- 
out the blessing of God, and I rejoice to know that, in this 
crisis of our affairs, good men everywhere are supplicating 
Him for His favor and protection.' He then added a post- 
script, which most touchingly exhibited his thoughtful and 
tender recollection of the troubles of others, even in that 
hour when all his thoughts might be supposed to be absorbed 
by his vast responsibilities as the leader of the Army of 
l!^orthern Virginia." 

Not long before the evacuation of Petersburg, a chaplain 
was one day distributing tracts along the trenches, when he 
perceived a brilliant cavalcade approaching. General Lee — 
accompanied by General John B. Gordon, General A. P. Hill, 



HIS CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 4^9 

and other general officers, with their staffs— was inspecting 
our lines and reconnoitring those of the enemy. The keen 
eye of Gordon recognized and his cordial grasp detained the 
humble tract-distributor, as he warmly inquired about his 
work. Genera] Lee at once reined in his horse and joined 
in the conversation, the rest of the party gathered around, 
and the humble colporteur thus became the centre of a group 
of whose notice the highest princes of the earth might well 
be proud. General Lee asked if he ever had calls for prayer- 
books, and said that if he would call at his headquarters he 
would give him some for distribution— that "a friend m 
Richmond had given him a new prayer-book, and, upon his 
saying that he would give his old one, that he had used ever 
since the Mexican War, to some soldier, the friend had offered 
him a dozen new books for the old one, and he had, of course, 
accepted so good an offer, and now had twelve instead of one 
to give away." He called at the appointed hour. The gen- 
eral had gone out on some important matter, but even amid 
his pressing duties had left the prayer-books with a member 
of his staff, with instructions concerning them. He had 
written on the fly-leaf of each, " Presented by E. E. Lee," 
and we are sure that those of the gallant men to whom they 
were given who survive the war now cherish them as pre- 
cious legacies, and will hand them down as heirlooms to 
their descendants. 

General Lee's orders and reports always gratefully recoo-- 
nized '^the Lord of hosts" as the "Giver of victory," and 
expressed a humble dependence upon and trust in Him. 

He thus began his dispatch to the President the evening 
of hie great victoiy at Cold Harbor and Gaines's Mill. 

"Headquarters, June 27, 1862. 
*' Bis Excellency President Davis. 

"Mr. Peesident: Profoundly grateful to Almighty God for 
the signal victory granted to us, it is my pleasing task to an- 
nounce to you the success achieved by this army to-day." 



420 EEMIXISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

His beautiful general order of congratulation to tlie 
troops on their series of splendid victories during tlie seven 
dajs' battles opened with these memorable words : 

" General Order No. 75. 

"Headquarters, in the Field, July^t, 1862. 

" The commanding general, profoundly grateful to the Giver 

of all victory for the signal success with which He has blessed 

our arms, tenders bis warmest thanks and congratulations to the 

army by whose valor such splendid results have been achieved." 

His dispatch, announcing his great victory at Fredericks- 
burg, contains the brief but significant sentence, " ThanJcs 
he to Godr 

The following extracts, from an order which he issued to 
the troops not long after the battle of Fredericksburg, show 
the same spirit : 

" General Order No. 132. 

"Headquarters Army of Northern Virginia, December 31, 1862. 
" The general commanding takes this occasion to express to 
the officers and soldiers of the army his high appreciation of 
the fortitude, valor, and devotion, displayed by them, which 
under the blessing of Almighty God have added the victory of 
Fredericksburg to the long list of their trivimphs. . . . That this 
great result was achieved with a loss small in jDoint of numbers 
only augments the admiration with which the commanding gen- 
eral regards the prowess of the troops, and increases his grati- 
tude to Him who hath given us the victory. . . . The signal 
manifestations of Divine Mercy that have distinguished the 
eventful and glorious campaign of the year just closing give 
assurance of hope that under the guidance of the same Almighty 
hand the coming year will be no less fruitful of events that will 
insure the safety, peace, and happiness of our beloved country, 
and add new lustre to the already imperishable name of the 
Army of Northern Virginia. 

" R. E. Lee,, General 



HIS CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 421 

. In his dispatch to President Davis, after Chancellorsville, 
he said : " We have again to thank Almighty God for a great 
victory." 

And in his general orders to his troops he holds tliis sig- 
nilicant language :".... While this glorious victory enti- 
tles you to the praise and gratitude of the nation, we are 
especially called upon to return our grateful thanks to the 
only Giver of victory for the signal deliverance He has 
wrought. 

" It is, therefore, earnestly recommended that the troops 
unite, on Simday next, in ascribing unto the Lord of hosts 
the glory due unto his name." 

He announced the victory at Winchester in the following 
characteristic dispatch : 

''June 15, 1863. 
" To His Excellency Jefferson Davis : 

" God has again crowned the valor of our troops with suc- 
cess. Early's division stormed the enemy's iutrenchments at 
Winchester, capturing their artillery, etc. R E. Lee." 

His order requiring the observance of the fast-day ap- 
pointed by President Davis in August, 1863, was as follows : 

^^ General Order No. 83. 
" Headquarters Army Northern Virginia, August 13, 1863. 

" The President of the Confederate States has, in the name 
of the people, appointed the 21st day of August as a day of 
fasting, humiliation, and prayer. A strict observance of the day 
is enjoined upon the officers and soldiers of this army. All mili- 
tary duties, except such as are absolutely necessary, will be sus- 
pended. The commanding officers of brigades and regiments 
are requested to cause divine services, suitable to the occasion, 
to be performed in their respective commands. 

" Soldiers ! we have sinned against Almighty God. We 
have forgotten his signal mercies, and have cultivated a re- 
vengeful, haughty, and boastful spirit. We have not remem- 
bered that the defenders of a just cause should be pure in his 



422 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

eyes ; that ' our times are in liis hands ; ' and we have relied 
too much on our own arms for the achievement of our indepen- 
dence. God is our only refuge and our strength. Let us humble 
ourselves before Him. Let us confess our manj^ sins, and be- 
seech Him to give us a higher courage, a purer patriotism, and 
more determined will ; that He will convert the hearts of our 
enemies ; that He will hasten the time when war, with its sor- 
rows and sufferings, shall cease, and that He will give us a name 
and place among the nations of the earth. 

"R. E. Lee, General 

We can never forget the effect produced by the reading 
of this order at the solemn services of that memorable fast- 
day. A precious revival was already in progress in many of 
the commands. The day was almost universally observed ; 
the attendance upon preaching and other services was very 
large ; the solemn attention and starting tear attested the 
deep interest felt ; and the work of grace among the troops 
widened and deepened, and M-ent gloriously on until there 
had been at least fifteen thousand professions of faith in 
Christ as a personal Saviour. How far these grand results 
were due to this fast-day, or to the quiet influence and fer- 
vent prayers of the commanding general, eternity alone shall 
reveal. 

When General Meade crossed the Rapidan in November, 
1863, the troops were stirred by the following addi'ess : 

" General Order No. 102. 
"Headquarters Army Northern Virginia, November 26, 1863. 

" The enemy is again advancing upon our capital, and the 
country once more looks to this army for protection. Under 
the blessings of God, your valor has repelled every previous at- 
tempt, and, invoking the continuance of his favor, we cheerfully 
commit to Him the issue of the coming conflict. 

" A cruel enemy seeks to reduce our fathers and our mothers, 
our wives and our children, to abject slavery ; to strip them of 
their property, and drive them from their homes. Upon you 



HIS CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 423 

these helpless ones rely to avert these terrible calamities, and 
secure them the blessing of liberty and safety. Your past his- 
tory gives them the assurance that their trust will not be in 
vain. Let every man remember that all he holds dear depends 
upon the faithful discharge of his duty, and resolve to fight, and, 
if need be, to die, in defense of a cause so sacred, and worthy the 
name won by this army on so many bloody fields. 

(Signed) " R. E. Lee, General^ 

We give the following, as illustrating not only Iiis trust 
in God, but also liis tender solicitude for his soldiers : 

^^ General Order JVo. 7. 

"Headquarters Army Northern Virginia, January 22, 1864. 

" The commanding general considers it due to the army to 
state that the temporary reduction of rations has been caused 
by circumstances beyond the control of those charged with 
its support. Its welfare and comfort are the objects of his 
constant and earnest solicitude ; and no effort has been spared 
to provide for its wants. It is hoped that the exertions now 
being made will render the necessity of short duration ; but the 
history of the army has shown that the country can require no 
sacrifice too great for its patriotic devotion. 

" Soldiers ! you tread, with no unequal steps, the road by 
which your fathers marched through suffering, privation, and 
blood, to independence ! 

" Continue to emulate in the future, as you have in the past, 
their valor in arms, their patient endurance of hardships, their 
high resolve to be free, which no trial could shake, no bribe se- 
duce, no danger appall ; and be assured that the just God, who 
crowned their efforts with success, will, in his own good time, 
send down his blessings upon. yours. 

(Signed) " R. E. Lee, General^ 

The following was his order for tlie observance of the 
fast-day appointed for April, 1864 : 



424 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" General Order JSfo. 23. 

"Headquarters Army Northern Virginia, March 30, 1864. 

" In compliance with the recommendation of the Senate 
and House of Representatives, his Excellency the President 
has issued his proclamation calling upon the people to set apart 
Friday, the 8th of April, as a day of fasting, humiliation, and 
prayer. The commanding general invites the army to join in 
the observance of the day. He directs due preparations to be 
made in all- departments, to anticipate the wants of the sev- 
eral commands, so that it may be strictly observed. All mili- 
tary duties, except those that .are absolutely necessary, will be 
suspended. The chaplains are desired to hold services in their 
regiments and brigades. The officers and men are requested to 
attend. 

" Soldiers ! let us humble ourselves before the Lord our God, 
asking, through Christ, the forgiveness of our sins, beseecliing the 
aid of the God of our forefathers in the defense of our homes 
and our liberties, thanking Him for his past blessings, and im- 
ploring their continuance upon our cause and our people. 

«R. E. Lee, General 

In Ms dispatcli annomicing the result of the first day's 
battle in the Wilderness he says : 

"... By the blessing of God we maintained our posi- 
tion against every efEort until night, when the contest 
closed. ..." 

And in his dispatch concerning the advance of the enemy 
on the next day he says : 

"... Every advance on his part, thanks to a merciful 
God, has been repulsed. ..." 

He closes his dispatch concerning the first day at Spott- 
sylvania by saying, " I am most thankful to the Giver of 
all victoiy that our loss is small ; " and that concerning the 
action of June 3, 1864, with " Om- loss to-day has been 
small, and our success, under the blessing of God, all that we 
could expect. ..." 



HIS CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 425 

He closed his annouucement of A. P. Hill's brilliant vic- 
tory at Reams's Station, in August, 1864, by saying : 

"... Our profound gratitude is due the Giver of all 
victory, and our thanks to the brave men and officers en- 
gaged. ..." 

In his order assuming the command of all of the Confed- 
erate forces, he said : 

"... Deeply impressed with the difficulties and respon- 
sibility of the position, and humbly invoking the guidance 
of Almighty God, I rely for success upon the courage and 
fortitude of the army, sustained by the patriotism and fii-m- 
ness of the people, confident that their united efforts, under 
the blessing of Heaven, will secure peace and indepen- 
dence. ..." 

"We give the above ohly as specimens of his dispatches 
and general orders, which all recognized in the most em- 
phatic manner his sense of dependence upon and trust in 
God. 

"With the close of the war, and the afflictions which came 
upon his loved land, the piety of this great man seems to 
have mellowed and deepened, and we could fill pages con- 
cerning his life at Lexington, and the bright evidence he 
gave of vital, active godhness. 

He was a most regular attendant upon all of the services 
of his own church, his seat in the college -chapel was never 
vacant unless he was kept away by sickness, and if there 
was a union prayer-meeting or a service of general interest 
in any of the churches of Lexington, General Lee was sure 
to be among the most devout attendants. 

His pew in his own church was immediately in front of 
the chancel, his seat in the chapel was the second from the 
pulpit, and he seemed always to prefer a seat near the preach- 
er's stand. He always devoutly knelt during prayer, and 
his attitude during the entire service was that of an interested 
listener or a reverential participant. 

He was not accustomed to indulge in carping criticisms 



426 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

of sermons, but was a most intelligent judge of what a ser- 
mon ought to be, and always expressed his preference for 
those sermons which presented most simply and earnestly 
the soul-saving truths of the Gospel. The writer heard him 
remark in reference to one of the Baccalaureate sermons 
preached at the college : " It was a noble sermon — one of the 
very best I ever heard — and the beauty of it was that the 
preacher gave our young men the very marrow of the Grospel, 
and with a simple earnestness that must have reached their 
hearts and done them good," 

Upon another occasion a distinguished minister had ad- 
di-essed the Young Men's Christian Association of the col- 
lege, and on the next night delivered a popular lecture. 
Speaking of the last, General Lee said : " It was a very fine 
lecture, and I enjoyed it. But I did not like it as much as I 
did the one before our Christian Association. That touched 
our hearts, and did us all good." 

He had also a most intelligent appreciation of the adapta- 
tion of religious services to particular occasions, and of the 
appropriateness of prayers to the time and place in which they 
were offered. 

He once said to one of the Faculty : " I want you to go 

with me to call upon Mr. , the new minister, who has just 

come to town. I want to pay my respects to him, and to 
invite him to take his turn in the conduct of our chapel ex- 
ercises, and to do what he can for the spiritual interests of 
om* young men. 

" And do you think that it would be any harm for me to 

dehcately hint to Mr. that we would be glad if he would 

make his morning prayers a little short f You know our 

friend is accustomed to make his prayers too long. 

He prays for the Jews, the Turks, the heathen, the Chinese, 
and everybody else, and makes his prayers run into the 
regular hour for our college recitations. Would it be wrong 

for me to suggest to Mr. that he confine his morning 

prayers to us poor sinners at the college^ cmd pray for the 



HIS CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 427 

Turks, the Jews, the Chinese, and the other heathen, some 
other time f " 

The suggestion is one which those who lead in public 
prayer would do well to ponder. 

General Lee was emphatically a man ofj)rayer. He was 
accustomed to pray in his family, and to have his seasons of 
secret prayer, which he allowed nothing else, however press- 
ing, to interrupt. He was also a constant reader and a dili- 
gent student of the Bible, and had his regular seasons for this 
delightful exercise. Even amid his most active campaigns he 
found time to read every day some portion of Grod's Word. 

As the writer watched alone by his body the day after his 
death, he picked up from the table a well-used pocket Bible, 
in M^hich was written, in his characteristic chirography, " R. E. 
Lee, lieutenant-colonel, U. S. Army." How he took this 
blessed book as the man of his counsel and the light of his 
pathway — how its precious promises cheered him amid the 
afflictions and trials of his eventful life — how its glorious 
hopes illumined for him "the dark valley and shadow of 
death," eternity alone will fully reveal. 

And he always manifested the liveliest interest in giving 
to others the precious Bible. During the war he was an 
active promoter of Bible distribution among his soldiers, and 
soon after coming to Lexington he accepted the presidency of 
the " Eockbridge Bible Society," and continued to discharge 
its duties up to the time of his death. We give his letter 
accepting this office : 

" Gentlemen : I have delayed replying to your letter inform- 
ing me of my having been elected President of the ' Rockbridge 
Bible Society,' not for want of interest in the subject, but from 
an apiDrehension that I should not be able to perform the duties 
of the position in such manner as to advance the high object 
proposed. Having, however, been encouraged by your kind as- 
surances, and being desirous of cooperating in any way I can in 
extending the inestimable knowledge of tlie priceless truths of 
the Bible, I accept the position assigned me. 



428 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" With many thanks to the Society for the high compliment 
paid me by their selection as president, 

" I am, with great respect, your obedient servant, 

(Signed) " R, E. Lee. 

" Rev. Dr. Pendleton, 1 

Colonel J. L. T. Preston, >■ Committee. '' 
Mr. William White, ) 

The following paper may be appropriately introduced 
here : 

" At the meeting of the Board of Managers of the Rock- 
bridge County Bible Society, on the 12th inst., for the pur- 
pose of imparting to the organization greater efficiency, in 
addition to other important measures adopted, and in sub- 
stance since published, the undersigned were appointed a 
committee to prepare and publisli a minute expressing the 
deep sense which the managers and members of this Society 
have of the exalted worth of their last president, tlie illustri- 
ous General E. E. Lee — of the blessed influence which he 
exerted as a Christian man, and in his official relation to this 
cause, and of the grievous loss to us in his removal even to 
celestial joy. 

" The duty is to us most grateful. World-wide and en- 
dm-ing as must be the renown of our honored friend, for 
great abilities, grandeur of character, and achievements, per- 
haps, in proportion to appliances never sui-passed, his crown- 
ing glory was, in our view, the sublime simplicity of his 
Christian faith and life. To the inviolable dignity of a soul 
among the noblest of all history was in him thoroughly 
united that guileless, unpretending, gentle and yet earnest 
spirit of a little child so emphatically designated by our 
Lord as the essential characteristic of his chosen ones. These 
were the traits which, while they justly endeared him to 
children, and friends, and all the people, rendered him 
prompt to every — even the humblest — duty, and caused him, 
although burdened with weighty cares, to accept the quietly 



HIS CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 429 

useful task of presiding over so inconspicuous a good work 
as that of the Rockbridge County Bible Society. Of the 
judicious zeal witli wliiek lie undertook tins service, evidence 
conclusive was at once given in the M'isely simple yet stirring 
appeal which he penned and sent forth to the several min- 
isters and congregations of the county, urging them to re- 
newed energy in remedying Bible destitution throughout 
our borders. Well may the friends of this cause mourn the 
loss of such a leader, and record on the tablets of their hearts 
an example so good, as an incentive to their own efficiency 
for the future ! 

" In connection with this testimonial of the Society's lov- 
ing estimate of their last president, the undersigned were 
instructed to cause to be published the appeal above referred 
to, written by General Lee's own hand, of which copies were 
at the time sent to all the ministers and congregations of the 
county. The original remains a precious memento in the 
archives of the Society. To it, as hereunto subjoined in 
print, we ask the attentive consideration due alike to its 
great author and to the important cause for which he pleads. 
Facts and principles bearing on the question are to-day yctj 
much as they were five years ago, when the mind of this 
great and good man was moved so impressively to put them 
forth in the following circular. 

"Although now resting from his labors, his works do 
follow him Shall they not, in this and in other forms, 
effectually plead with all to be alive to Christian privilege in 
this matter, and faithful to duty therein and in all things ? 
"W. N. Pendleton, \ 
J. L. Clakke, >• Committee." 

J. W. Pratt, J 

" Lexington, Va., January 14, 1869, 
" The Rockbridge County Bible Society, whose operations 
were interrupted and records lost during the war, was reorgan- 
ized on the 5th of last October by representatives of different 



430 EEMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

churches of the county, in pursuance of a notice given through the 
Lexington Gazette. A new constitution was adoj^ted, which 
provided for the reorganization of a board of managers com- 
posed of the ministers of each church and one representative 
from each congregation appointed by them, to meet at least 
once a year, on the first Saturday in October ; and that the 
officers of the Society shall be a president, vice-president, secre- 
tary and treasurer, and librarian, "who shall constitute the Execu- 
tive Committee of the Society. 

" At the meeting mentioned the following officers were 
elected : 

"R. E. Lee, President ; 

J. T. L. Preston, Vice-President ; 

WiLLiAJi G. White, Secretary and Treasurer / 

John S. White, Librarian. 

" In compliance with a resolution of the meeting requesting 
the Executive Committee to take measures to procure a supply 
of Bibles and to obtain from the congregations of the county 
funds for the purpose, it is respectfully requested that you will 
make at the earliest and most suitable occasion a collection in 
your congregation for this object and cause, the amount to be 
transmitted to the treasurer, Mr. William G. White, at Lexing- 
ton, and inform him at the same time, as far as practicable, how 
many copies of the Bible will be required to meet the wants of 
the congregation, as the constitution provides that each con- 
gregation shall mainly conduct the work of their distribution 
within their respective spheres. 

" The revival of the time-honored organization of the Rock- 
bridge Bible Society, it is believed, will fill with pleasure the 
hearts of all good citizens in the county, and the Executive Com- 
mittee earnestly appeal to the churches, their members, and all 
persons interested in the great work of the Society, to unite cor- 
dially and promptly with them for its accomplishment. The 
first object is to supply every family with a copy of the Bible 
that is without it, and as inany years have elapsed since there 
has been a distribution of the Holy Scriptures among us, it is 
feared, for reasons that are apparent, that there is at this time a 
great destitution among the people. The united and zealous 



HIS CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 431 

efforts of all the denominations in the county are therefore 
earnestly solicited in aid of this good work. 
" Respectfully submitted. 

" R. E. Lee, Pres. Bockhridge Bible Society. 
" To the Ministers and Churches of the County of Rockbridge, Va." 

General Lee was also deeply interested in the Virginia 
Bible Society and their noble work of giving the Word of 
God to the people. 

He wrote as follows to tlie president of that Society : 

" Lexington, Va., April 5, 1869. 

" Reverend and dear Sir : Your letter of the 1st inst. was 
only received this morning. 

" To reach Richmond by to-morrow evening, the anniversary 
of the Bible Society, I should have to ride all to-night to take 
the cars at Staunton to-morrow morning. I am suffering with a 
cold now, and fear the journey would lay me up. 

" I would, however, make the trial, did I think I could be of 
any service to the great object of the Society. If the managers 
could suggest any plan, in addition to the abundant distribution 
of the Holy Scriptures, to cause the mass of the people to medi- 
tate on their simple truths, and, in the language of Wilberforce, 
' to read the Bible—read the Bible,' so as to become acquainted 
with the experience and realities of religion, the greatest good 
would be accomplished. 

"Wishing the Society all success, and continual advance- 
ment in its work, 

" I am, with great respect, most truly yours, R. E. Lee. 
" Rev. George Woodbridge, President of the Virginia Bible Society." 

The following graceful acknowledgment of a copy of 
the Scriptures sent him by some English ladies may be ap- 
propriately introduced at this point : 

" Lexington, Va., April 16, 1866. 
" Eon. A. "W, Beeesfoed Hope, Bedgebury Park, Kent, England. 

"I have received within a few days your letter of November 
14, 1864, and had hoped that by this time it would have been 



432 KEMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

followed by the copy of the Holy Scriptures to which you refer, 
that I might have known the generous donors, whose names, 
you state, are inscribed upon its pages. 

" Its failure to reach me will, I fear, deprive me of that 
pleasure ; and I must ask the favor of you to thank them most 
heartily for their kindness in providing me with a book in com- 
parison with which all others in my eyes are of minor impor- 
tance, and which in all my perplexities and distresses has never 
failed to give me light and strength. Your assurance of the 
esteem in which I am held by a large portion of the British 
nation, as well as by those for whom you speak, is most grateful 
to my feelings, though I am aware that I am indebted to their 
generous natures, and not to my own merit, for their good 
opinion. 

" I beg, sir, that you will accept my sincere thanks for the 
kind sentiments which you have expressed toward me, and my 
unfeigned admiration of your exalted character. 

"I am, with great respect, your most obedient servant, 
(Signed) «R. E.Lee." 

General Lee was a most active promoter of the interests 
of his church, and of the cause of Christ in the community, 
and all the pastors felt that they had in him a warm friend. 

He was a most liberal contributor to his church and to 
other objects of benevolence. At the vestry meeting, which 
he attended, and over which he presided, the evening he was 
taken with his fatal illness, an effort was being made to raise 
a certain sum for an important object. General Lee had al- 
ready made an exceedingly liberal contribution, but, when it 
was ascertained that fifty-live dollars were still lacking, he 
quietly said, " I will give the balance." These were the last 
words he spoke in the meeting — his contribution, his last 
]Dublic act. The writer happens to know that, within the 
last twelve months of his life, he gave one hundred dollars 
to the education of soldiers' orphans, one hundred dollars to 
the Young Men's Christian Association of the college, and 
smaller sums to a number of similar objects — making, in the 



HIS CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 433 

aggregate, a most liberal contribution. And, then, his man- 
ner of contributing was so modest and unostentatious. In 
giving the writer a verj handsome contribution to the Lex- 
ington Baptist Church, he quietly said : " Will you do me 
the kindness to hand this to your treasurer, and save me the 
trouble of hunting him up ? I am getting old now, and you 
yoimg men must help me." And his whole manner was that 
of one receiving instead of bestowing a favor. 

General Lee was not accustomed to talk of any thing that 
concerned himself, and did not often speak freely of his 
inner religious feelings. Yet he would, when occasion 
offered, speak most decidedly of his reliance for salvation 
upon the merits of his personal Redeemer, and none who 
heard him thus talk could doubt for a moment that his faith 
was built on the " Rock of Ages." 

He one day said to a friend, in speaking of the duty of 

laboring for the good of others : " Ah ! Mrs. P , I find it 

so hard to keep one poor sinner's heart in the right way, that 
it seems presumptuous to try to help others," And yet he 
did, quietly and unostentatiously, speak " a word in season," 
and exert influences potent for good in directing others in 
the path to heaven. He was a " son of consolation " to the 
afflicted, and his letter-book contains some touching illustra- 
tions of this. We give the following extract from a letter 
written to an afflicted mother on the death, by drowning, of 
her son (then a student at the college) : 

"Lexington, Va., April 6, 1S68. 

" My dear MadajM : It grieves me to address you on a sub- 
ject which has already been announced to you in all of its woe, 
and which has brought to your heart such heavy affliction, 

" But I beg to be permitted to sympathize in your great sor- 
row, and to express to you on the part of the Faculty of the col- 
lege their deep grief at the calamity which has befallen you. It 
may be some consolation in your bereavement to know that your 
son was highly esteemed by the officers and students of the col- 
lege, and that this whole community unite in sorrow at bis un- 
28 



434 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

timely death. May God in bis mercy support you under this 
grievous trial, and give you that peace vrhich, as it passeth all un- 
derstanding, so nothing in this world can diminish or destroy it." 

On the death of Bishop Elliott, of Georgia, he wrote the 
following letter to the widow : 

"Lexington, Ya., February 21, 186'7. 

"My dear Mrs. Elliott: It would be in vain for me to at- 
tempt to express my grief at your great affliction. In common 
with the whole country I mourn the death of him whom, for 
more than a quarter of a century, I have admired, loved, and 
venerated, and whose loss to the church and society where his 
good offices were so important I can never expect to see supplied. 

" You have my deepest sympathy, and my earnest prayers 
are offered to Almighty God that He may be graciously pleased 
to comfort you in your great sorrow, and to bring you in his own 
good time to rejoice with him whom, in his all-wise providence. 
He has called before you to heaven. 

" With great respect, most truly yours, R. E. Lee." 

The following to the widow of his cherished friend, Gen- 
eral George "W. Randolph (for a time Confederate Secretary 
of War), will be read with mournful pleasure by the large 
circle of admirers and friends of this gifted and widely- 
lamented Yirginian : 

"Lexington, Va., April 11, 1867. 
" Mrs. Mart Randolph. 

" Mt dear Mrs. Randolph : The letter I received this morn- 
ing from your niece affords me an opportunity of writing to you 
on a subject over which I deeply mourn. But it is the survivors 
of the sad event whom I commiserate, and not him whom a gra- 
cious God has called to himself, and whose tender heart and do- 
mestic virtues make the pang of parting the more bitter to those 
who are left behind. I deferred writing, for I knew the hope- 
lessness of offering you consolation ; and yet, for what other pur- 
pose can a righteous man be summoned into the presence of a 
merciful God than to receive his reward ? However, then, we la- 



HIS CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 435 

ment, we ought not to deplore him or wish him back from his 
peaceful, happy home. I had hoped to have seen him once more 
in this world, and had been pleasing myself with the prospect 
of paying him a special visit this summer. But God, in mercy 
to him, has ordered otherwise, and I submit. 

" The recollection of his esteem and friendship will always 
be dear to me, and his kind remembrance in his long and painful 
illness will be gratefully cherished. His worth and truth, his 
unselfish devotion to right, and exalted patriotism, will cause all 
good men to mourn the country's loss in his death, while his 
gentle, manly courtesy, dignified conduct, and Christian charity, 
must intensely endear him to those who knew him. 

" Mrs. Lee and my daughters, while they join in unfeigned 
sorrow for your bereavement, unite with me in sincere regards 
and fervent prayers to him who can alone afford relief, for his 
gracious support and continued protection to you. May his 
abundant mercies be showered upon you, and may his almighty 
arm guide and uphold you ! 

" Please thank Miss Randolph for writing to me. 

" With great respect and true affection, your most obedient 
servant, 

(Signed) "RE. Lee." 

The following expresses a great deal in brief compass : 

"Lexington, Va., Feh-uary 28, 1870. 
" Mr. Samuel R. George, 71 ML Vernon Place, Baltimore, Md. 

" My dear Sir : I have learned, with deep regret, the great 
sorrow that has befallen you, and sincerely sympathize in your 
overwhelming grief; but the great God of heaven takes us at the 
period when it is best for us to go, and we can only gratefully 
acknowledge his mercy and try to be resigned to his will. Every 
beat of our hearts marks our progress through life, and admon- 
ishes us of the steps we make toward the grave. We are thus 
every moment reminded to prepare for our summons. With my 
earnest sympathy for yourself and kindest regards to your chil- 
dren, in which Mrs. Lee and my daughters unite, 

" I am most truly yours, R. E. Lee." 



436 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

The friendship between General Lee and the venerable 
Bishop Meade, of Yirginia (whose efficient labors in the cause 
of evangelical piety were widely known and appreciated even 
outside of his own communion), was touchingly beautiful, 
and the following letter will be read with peculiar interest : 

"Lexington, Va., March 1, 1866. 
"^^. Bev. John Johns, Bishop of Virginia, Theo. ) 
logical Seminary, near Alexandria, Va. \ 

" Rt. Rev. and dear Sir : I am very glad to learn from your 
note of the 27th ult. that you have consented to write a memoir 
of our good and beloved Bishop Meade. Of all the men I have 
ever known, I consider him the purest ; and a history of his 
character and life will prove a benefit to mankind. No one can 
portray that character or illustrate that life better than yourself; 
and I rejoice that the sacred duty has devolved upon you. 

" In compliance with your request, I will state as far as my 
recollection enables me the substance of what occurred in the 
short interview I had with him the evening before his death ; 
and I do so the more readily as you were present and can cor- 
rect the inaccuracies of my memory. I received a message 
about dark that the bishop was very ill, and desired to see me. 
On entering his room he recognized me S.t once, and, extending 
his hand, said that his earthly pilgrimage was nearly finished, 
and that before the light of another day he should have passed 
from this world ; that he had known me in childhood, when I 
recited to him the church catechism, taught me by my mother 
before I could read ; that his affection and interest began at 
that time, and strengthened by my marriage with his God-child, 
and continued to the present. Invoking upon me the guidance 
and protection of Almighty God, he bade me a last farewell. 

" With kindest regards to Mrs. Johns and your daughters, 
" I am most truly yours, 
(Signed) "R. E. Lee." 

A clergjTnan present, in describing this last interview, 
states that the bishop said to the great soldier : " God bless 
you ! God bless you, Robert, and fit you for your High and 



HIS CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 437 

responsible duties ! I can't call you ' general ; ' I must call 
you ' Robert ; ' I have heard you your catechism too often." 

General Lee was deeply affected by the interview, and, 
when he turned to leave the room, the bishop, much ex- 
hausted and with great emotion, took him by the hand and 
said : " Heaven bless you ! Heaven bless you, and give yon 
wisdom for your important and arduous duties." 

On the death of Randolph Fairfax, who fell at Fred- 
ericksburg, struck down by a fragment of the same shell that 
mortally wounded Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis Minor Coleman 
(the Christian soldier, accomplished scholar, and peerless 
gentleman) and Arthur Robinson (a grandson of William 
Wirt), General Lee, who highly appreciated the manly vir- 
tues of this young soldier of the cross, wrote the following 
letter to his bereaved father : 

" Camp Fredericksburg, December 28, 1862. 

"My dear Doctor: I have grieved most deeply at the 
death of you noble son. I have watched his conduct from the 
commencement of the war, and have pointed with pride to the 
patriotism, self-denial, and manliness of character he has exhib- 
ited. I had hoped that an opportunity would occur for the pro- 
motion he deserved ;' not that it would have elevated him, but 
have shown that his devotion to duty was appreciated by his 
country. 

" Such an opportunity would undoubtedly have occurred ; but 
he has been translated to a better world, for which his purity 
and piety eminently fitted him. You do not require to be told 
how great is his gain. It is the living for whom I sorrow. I 
beg you will offer to Mrs. Fairfax and your daughter my heart- 
felt sympathy, for I know the depth of their grief. That God 
may give you and them strength to bear this great affliction, is 
the earnest prayer of 

" Your early friend, R. E. Lee. 

"Dr. Orlando Fairfax, Richmond." 

On the death of his personal friend, George Peabody, 
General Lee wrote the following to Mr. Peabody Russell : 



438 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" . "Lexington, Va., iVbwniJer 10, 1869. 

" My dear Me. Russell : The announcement of the death 
of your uncle, Mr. George Peabody, has been received with the 
deepest regret wherever his name and benevolence are known ; 
and nowhere have his generous deeds, restricted to no country, 
section, or sect, elicited more heart-felt admiration than at the 
South. 

" He stands alone in history for the benevolent use and ju- 
dicious distribution of his great wealth, and his memory has 
become justly entwined in the affections of millions of his fel- 
low-citizens in both hemispheres. 

" I beg in my own behalf, and in behalf of the trustees and 
Faculty of Washington College, Virginia, which has not been 
forgotten by him in his acts of generosity, to tender our un- 
feigned sorrow at his death. 

" With great respect, j^our obedient servant, 

" R E. Lee." 

Upon the death of Professor Frank Preston, of William 
and Mary College, General Lee issued the following an- 
nouncement : 

"Washington College, November 23, 1869. 

" The death of Professor Frank Preston, a distinguished 
graduate, and late Assistant Professor of Greek in this college, 
has caused the deepest sorrow in the hearts of the Faculty and 
members of the institution. 

" Endowed with a mind of rare capacity, which bad been 
enriched by diligent study and careful cultivation, he stood 
among the first in the State in his pursuit in life. 

" We who so long and so intimately possessed his acquaint- 
ance, and so fully enjoyed the privilege of his companionship, 
feel especially his loss, and grieve profoundly at his death ; and 
we heartily sympathize with his parents and relatives in their 
great affliction, and truly participate in the deep sorrow that 
has befallen them. 

" With a view of testifying the esteem felt for his character 
and the respect due to his memory, all academic exercises will 
be suspended for the day ; and the Faculty and students are 



HIS CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 439 

requested to attend, in their respective bodies, his funeral ser- 
vices at the Presbyterian Church, at eleven o'clock, to pay the 
last sad tribute of respect to his earthly remains, while cherish- 
ing in their hearts his many virtues. 

" R. E. Lee, Presidents 

The above was written, currente calamo, immediately on 
his hearing of the death of Professor Preston, whom he most 
highly esteemed, not only as an accomplished scholar and 
high-toned gentleman, but as one who had been a gallant 
Confederate soldier, and wore till his death a badge of honor 
in the " empty sleeve " that hung at his side. 

We also give the following extract from a letter to Rev. 
Dr. Moses D. Hoge, of the Presbyterian Church, Richmond, 
soon after the death of his wife. After writing of a number 
of matters connected with the interests of the Virginia Bible 
Society, he concludes as follows : 

" And now, my dear sir, though perhaps inappropriate to 
the occasion, you must allow me to refer to a subject which has 
caused me great distress, and concerning which I have desired 
to write ever since its occurrence ; but, to tell the truth, I have 
not had the heart to do so. I knew how powerless I was to 
give any relief, and how utterly inadequate was any language 
that I could use even to mitigate your suffering. 

" I could, therefore, only offer up my silent prayers to him 
who alone can heal your bleeding heart; that in his infinite 
mercy He would be ever present with you to dry j^our tears and 
stanch yoiu" wounds ; to sustain you by his grace, and support 
you by his strength. 

" I hope you felt assured that, in this heavy calamity, you 
and your children had the heart-felt sympathy of Mrs. Lee and 
myself, and that you were daily remembered in oiir prayers. 

" With our best wishes and sincere affection, 

" I am very truly yours, R. E. Lee." 

Extracts of the same character could be multiplied, but 
the above must suffice. 



440 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

General Lee manifested the deepest concern for the spir- 
itual welfare of the young men under his care. Soon after 
becoming president of Washington College, he said, with 
deep feeling, to Rev. Dr. White, then the venerable pastor 
of the Lexington Presbyterian Church : " I shall be disap- 
pointed, sir — I shall fail in the leading object that brought 
me here, unless these young men become real Christians; 
and I wish you, and others of your sacred profession, to do 
all you can to accomplish this." 

Eev. Dr. Brown, editor of the Central Presbyteria7i, and 
one of the trustees of Washington and Lee University, says, 
in his paper : 

" The crowning excellence of such men as Jackson and 
Lee was their sincere Christian piety. The remark made by 
General Lee to the Rev. Dr. White was made to us upon 
another occasion in a form even more emphatic. ' I dread,' 
said he, ' the thought of any student's going away from the 
college without becoming a sincere Christian.' " 

At the beginning of each session of the college he was 
accustomed to address an autograph letter to the pastors of 
Lexington, inviting them to arrange for conducting in turn 
the regular chapel services of the college, asking them to in- 
duce the students to attend their several churches, Bible- 
classes, etc., and urging them to do all in their power for the 
spiritual good of the students. Not content with this general 
request, he was accustomed to prepare lists of students who 
belonged themselves to, or whose families were connected 
with, particular churches, and to hand these to the several 
pastors, with the earnestly-expressed wish that they would 
consider these young men under their especial watch-care, 
and give them every attention in their power ; and he would 
frequently ask a pastor after individual students — whether 
they belonged to his Bible-class, were regular in their attend- 
ance at church, etc. 

General Lee did not believe in enforced religion, and 
never requu'ed the students, by any college-law, to attend 



HIS CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 441 

cliapel or clim-ch, but he did every thing in his power to in- 
fluence them to do so, and with the largest success. 

At the " Concert of Prayer for Colleges," in Lexington, 
in 1869, a pastor present made an address in which he urged 
that the great need of our colleges was a genuine, pervasive 
revival — that this could only come from God ; and that, in- 
asmuch as He has promised his Holy Spirit to those who ask 
him, we should make special prayer for a revival in the col- 
leges of the country, and more particularly in Washington 
College and the Virginia Military Institute. At tlie close of 
the meeting, General Lee went to him and said, with more 
than his usual warmth : " I wish, sir, to thank you for your 
address ; it was just what we needed. Our great want is a 
revival which will bring these young men to Christ." 

During the great revival in the Yirginia Militaiy Insti- 
tute in 1869, he said to his pastor : " That is the best news I 
have heard since I have been in Lexington. Would that we 
could have such a revival in aU of our colleges ! " Rev. Dr. 
Kirkpatrick, Professor of Moral Philosophy in Washington 
College, relates the following concerning a conversation he 
had with General Lee just a short time previous to his fatal 
illness : " We had been conversing for some time respecting 
the religious welfare of the students. General Lee's feel- 
ings then became so intense that for a time his utterance was 
choked ; but, recovering himself, with his eyes overflowed 
with tears, his lips quivering with emotion, and both hands 
raised, he exclaimed, ' O doctor ! if I could only know that 
all the young men in the college were good Christians, I 
should have nothing more to desire.' " 

General Lee was deeply interested in the Young Men's 
Christian Association of the college, and seemed highly grat- 
ified at its large measure of success. His letter, in reply to 
one making him an honorary member of the Association, 
was as follows : 

" My dear Sir : I have received your letter announcing my 
election as an honorary member of the Young Men's Christian 



442 REMINISOENOES OF GEJvTlRAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

Association of Washington College, a society in whose pros- 
perity I take the deepest interest, and for the welfare of whose 
members my prayers are daily offered. Please present my 
grateful thanks to your Association for the honor conferred 
on me, and believe me, 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

"R. E. Lee. 
" Mr. A. N. Gordon, Corresponding Secretary 

" Young Men's Christian Association." 



Rev. Dr Brantly, of Baltimore, and Bishop Marvin, of 
Missouri, who staid at his house during the college com- 
mencement of 1870, both speak of the warm gratification 
which General Lee expressed at the encouraging report of 
the religious interest among the students. 

General Lee was a member of the Episcopal Church, and 
was sincerely attached to the Church of his choice ; but his 
large heart took in Christians of every name ; he treated 
ministers of all denominations with the most marked cour- 
tesy and respect ; and it may be truly said of him that he 
had a heart and hand " ready to every good work." Wlien 
once asked his opinion of a certain theological question, which 
was exciting considerable discussion, he replied : " Oh ! I 
never trouble myself about such questions ; my chief con- 
cern is to try to be a humble, earnest Christian myself." 

An application of a Jewish soldier for permission to 
attend certain ceremonies of his synagogue in Richmond was 
indorsed by his captain: "Disapproved. If such applica- 
tions were granted, the whole army would turn Jews or 
shaking Quakers." When the paper came to General Lee, 
he indorsed on it : " Approved, and respectfully retm-ned to 

Captain , with the advice that he should always respect 

the religious views and feelings of others." 

The following letters, addi'essed to a prominent rabbi of 
Richmond (to whom I am indebted for copies), will serve to 
illustrate the broad charity of this model Christian : 



HIS CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 443 

" Headquarters, Valley Mt., August 29, 1S61. 
" Rabbi M. J. Michelbacher, Preacher Hebrew Con- ) 
gregation, House of Love, Richmond, Va. ) 

" Rev. Sib : I have just received your letter of the 23d inst., 
requesting that a furlough from the 2d to the 15th of Septem- 
ber be granted to the soldiers of the Jewish persuasion in the 
Confederate States Army, that they may participate in the ap>- 
proaching holy services of the synagogue. It would give me 
great pleasure to comply with a request so earnestly urged by 
you, and which, I know, would be so highly appreciated by 
that class of our soldiers. But the necessities of war admit of 
no relaxation of the efforts requisite for its success, nor can it be 
known on what day the presence of every man may be required. 
I feel assured that neither you nor any member of the Jewish 
congregation would wish to jeopardize a cause you have so much 
at heart by the withdrawal even for a season of its defenders. 
I cannot, therefore, grant the general furlough you desire, but 
must leave it to individuals to make their own applications to 
their several commanders, in the hope that many will be able to 
enjoy the privilege you seek for them. Should any be deprived 
of the opportunity of offering up their prayers according to the 
rites oi their Church, I trust that their penitence may neverthe- 
less be accepted by the Most High, and their petitions answered. 
That your prayers for the success and welfare of our cause may 
be answered by the Great Ruler of the universe, is my ardent 
wish. 

" I have the honor to be, with high esteem, your ob't servant, 
" R. E. Lee, General commanding.^* 

" Headquarters Army Northern Virginia, April 2, 1863. 
" M. J. Michelbacher, Minister of Hebrew ) 
Congregation, Richmond, Va. S 

" Sir : It will give me pleasure to comply with the request 
contained in your letter of the 30th ult., as far as the public 
interest will permit. But I think it more than probable that 
the army -will be engaged in active operations, when, of course, 
no one would wish to be absent from its ranks, nor could they 
in that event be spared. The reports from all quarters show 



444 REMKaSCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

that General Hooker's army is prepared to cross the Rappahan- 
nock, and only awaits favorable weather and roads. 

" The sentence in the case of Isaac Arnold has been sus- 
pended, until the decision of the President shall be known. 
Thanking you very sincerely for your good wishes in behalf of 
our country, I remain, with great respect, 

" Your obedient servant, R. E. Lee." 

" Headquarters Army Northern Virginia, September 20, 1864. 
" Bev. M. J. MiCHELBACHEK, Bichmond, Va. 

" Sir : I have received your letter of the 15th inst., asking 
that furloughs may be granted to the Israelites in the army, 
from September 30th to October 11th, to enable them to sepair 
to Richmond to observe the holy days appointed by the Jewish 
religion. 

" It would afford me much pleasure to comply with your 
request did the interests of the service permit ; but it is impos- 
sible to grant a general furlough to one class of our soldiers 
without recognizing the claims of others to a like indulgence. 
I can only grant furloughs on applications setting forth special 
grounds for them, or in accordance with the general orders on 
that subject applicable to all the army alike. 

" I will gladly do all in my power to facilitate the observance 
of the duties of their religion by the Israelites in the army, and 
will allow them every indulgence consistent with safety and 
discipline. If their applications be forwarded to me in the 
usual way, and it appears that they can be spared, I will be 
glad to approve as many of them as circumstances will permit. 
Accept my thanks for your kind wishes for myself, and believe 

me to be, 

" With great respect, your obedient ser\^ant, 

« R. E. Lee." 

This characteristic was rioted by all who came in contact 
with him, and not a few will cordially echo the remark of 
the venerable Dr. White, who said, with deep feeling, dur- 
ing the funeral services : " He belonged to one branch of 
the Chm'ch, and I to another ; yet, in my intercourse with 



HIS CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. ' 445 

him — an intercourse rendered far more frequent and inti- 
mate by the tender sympathy he felt in my ill health — the 
thought never occurred to me that wc belonged to different 
Churches. His love for the truth, and for all that is good 
and useful, was such as to render his brotherly kindness 
and charity as boundless as were the wants and sorrows of 
his race." 

It were an easy task to write pages more in illustration 
of the Christian character of our great leader ; but want of 
space forbids. 

If I have ever come in contact with a sincere, devout 
Christian — one who, seeing himself to be a sinner, trusted 
alone in the merits of Christ, who humbly tried to walk 
the path of duty, " looking unto Jesus " as the author and 
finisher of his faith, and whose piety constantly exhibited 
itself in his daily life — that man was General R. E. Lee. 



CHAPTEE XIII. 

HIS DEATH AjSTD FTJ^EEAL OBSEQUIES. 

Although a resident of Lexington at the time, and 
fully acquainted with all the circumstances of the sickness, 
death, and funeral obsequies of General Lee, I deem myself 
fortunate in being able to present the following account 
from the graceful pen of Colonel William Preston Johnston, 
whose intimacy with om^ illustrious chief, added, to the fact 
that he was an almost constant watcher at his dying bedside, 
will add a peculiar interest to the narrative which he has 
kindly prepared for this volume. 

" DEATH OF GENEEAL LEE. 

" The death of General Lee was not due to any sudden 
cause, but was the result of agencies dating as far back as 
1863. In the trying campaign of that year, he contracted 
a severe sore-throat, that resulted in rheumatic inflammation 
of the sac inclosing the heart. There is no doubt that 
after this sickness his health was always more or less im- 
paired ; and, although he complained little, yet rapid exer- 
cise on foot or on horseback produced pain and difficulty 
of breathing. In October, 1869, he was again attacked by 
inflammation of the heart-sac, accompanied by muscular 
rheumatism of the back, right side, and arms. The action 
of the heart was weakened by this attack ; the flush upon 
the face was deepened, the rheumatism increased, and he was 
troubled with weariness and depression. 




^^' 









^^^-c.^ 2//'^'^'- /s-^^. 



HIS DEATH AND FUNERAL OBSEQUIES. 447 

" In Marcli, 18Y0, General Lee, yielding to the solicita- 
tions of friends and medical advisers, made a six weeks' 
visit to Georgia and Florida. He returned greatly benefited 
by the influence of the genial climate, the society of friends 
in those States, and the demonstrations of respect and affec- 
tion of the people of the South ; his physical condition, 
however, was not gi'eatly improved. Dming this winter and 
sprmg he had said to his son. General Custis Lee, that his 
attack was mortal ; and had virtually expressed the same be- 
lief to other trusted friends. And now, with that delicacy 
that pervaded all his actions, he seriously considered the 
question of resigning the presidency of Washington Col- 
lege, 'fearful that he might not be equal to his duties.' 
After listening, however, to the affectionate remonstrances 
of the. Faculty and board of trustees, who well knew the 
value of his wisdom in the supervision of the college, and 
the power of his mere presence and example upon the stu- 
dents, he resumed his labors with the resolution to remain 
at his post and carry forward the great work he had so auspi- 
ciously begun. 

" Dm-ing the summer he spent some weeks at the Hot 
Springs of Yirginia, using the baths, and came home seem- 
ingly better in health and spirits. He entered upon the du- 
ties of the opening collegiate year in September with that 
quiet zeal and noiseless energy that marked all his actions, 
and an unusual elation was felt by those about him at the 
increased prospect that long years of usefulness and honor 
would yet be added to his glorious life. 

"Wednesday, the 28th of September, 1870, found Gen- 
eral Lee at the post of duty. In the morning he was fully 
occupied with the correspondence and other tasks incident 
to his office of President of "Washington College, and he de- 
clined offers of assistance from members of the Faculty, of 
whose sei-vices he sometimes availed himself. After dinner, 
at four o'clock, he attended a vestry-meeting of Grace (Epis- 
copal) Church. The afternoon was chilly and wet, and a 



448 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

steady rain had set in, wliicli did not cease until it resulted 
in a great flood, tlie most memorable and destructive in this 
region for a hundred years. The church was rather cold 
and damp, and General Lee, during the meeting, sat in a 
pew with his military cape cast loosely about him. In a 
conversation that occupied the brief space preceding the 
call to order, he took part, and told, with marked cheerful- 
ness of manner and kindliness of tone, some pleasant anec- 
dotes of Bishop Meade and Chief-Justice Marshall. The 
meeting was protracted until after seven o'clock, by a discus- 
sion touching the rebuilding of the church edifice and the 
increase of the rector's salary. General Lee acted as chair- 
man, and, after hearing all that was said, gave his own 
opinion, as was his wont, briefly and without argument. He 
closed the meeting with a characteristic act. The amount 
required for the minister's salary still lacked a sum much 
greater than General Lee's proportion of the subscription, 
in view of his frequent and generous contributions to the 
church and other charities; but just before the adjournment, 
when the treasurer announced the amount of the deficit 
still remaining. General Lee said, in a low tone : ' I will give 
that sum.' He seemed tired toward the close of the meet- 
ing, and, as was afterward remarked, showed an unusual 
flush, but at the time no apprehensions were felt. 

" General Lee returned to his house, and, finding his 
family waiting tea for him, took his place at the table, 
standing to say grace. The effort was vain, the lips could 
not utter the prayer of the heart. Finding himself unable 
to speak, he took his seat quietly and without agitation. 
His face seemed to some of the anxious group about him to 
wear a look of sublime resignation, and to evince a full 
knowledge that the hour had come when all the cares and 
anxieties of his crowded life were at an end. His physi- 
cians, Drs. H. T. Barton and K. L. Madison, arrived 
promptly, applied the usual remedies, and placed him upon 
the couch from which he was to rise no more. To him 



HIS DEATH AND FUNERAL OBSEQUIES. 449 

liencefortli the things of this world were as nothing, and he 
bowed with resignation to the command of the Master he 
had followed so long with reverence. 

" The S)anptoms of his attack resembled concussion of the 
brain, without the attendant swoon. There was marked 
debility, a slightly impaired consciousness, and a tendency to 
doze ; but no paralysis of motion or sensation, and no evidence 
of softening or inflammation of the brain. His physicians 
treated the case as one of venous congestion, and with 
apparently favorable results. Yet, despite these propitious 
augmies drawn from his physical symptoms, in view of the 
great mental strain he had undergone, the gravest fears were 
felt that the attack was mortal. He took without objection 
the medicines and diet prescribed, and was strong enough to 
turn in bed without aid, and to sit up to take nourishment. 
During the earlier days of his illness, though inclined to doze, 
he was easily aroused, was quite conscious and observant, 
evidently understood whatever was said to him, and answered 
questions briefly but intelligently ; he was, however, averse 
to much speaking, generally using monosyllables, as had 
always been his habit when sick. When first attacked, he 
said to those who were removing his clothes, pointing at the 
same time to his rheumatic shoulder, ' You hurt my arm.' 
Although he seemed to be gradually improving until October 
10th, he apparently knew from the first that the appointed 
hour had come when he must enter those dark gates that, 
closing, reopen no more«to earth. In the words of his 
physician, 'he neither expected nor desired to recover.' 
"\Yhen General Custis Lee made some allusion to his recovery, 
he shook his head and pointed upward. On the Monday 
morning before his death, Dr. Madison, finding liun looking 
better, tried to cheer him : ' How do you feel to-day, 
general ? ' General Lee replied, slowly and distinctly : ' I 
feel better.' The doctor then said : ' You must make haste 
and get well; Traveler has been standing so long in the 
stable that he needs exercise.' The general made no reply,, 
29 



450 REMINISCEXCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

but slowly shook his head and closed his eyes. Several times 
during his illness he put aside his medicine, saying, ' It is 
of no use ; ' but yielded patiently to the wishes of his 
physicians or children, as if the slackened chords of being 
still responded to the touch of duty or affection. 

" On October 10th, during the cifternoon, his pulse be- 
came feeble and rapid, and his breathing hurried, with other 
evidences of great exhaustion. About midnight he was 
seized with a shivering from extreme debility, and Dr. 
Barton felt obliged to announce the danger to the family. 
On October 11th, he was evidently sinking ; his respiration 
was hurried, and his pulse feeble and rapid. Though less 
observant, he still recognized whoever approached him, but 
refused to take any thing unless presented by his physicians. 
It now became certain that the case was hopeless. His de- 
cline was rapid, yet gentle ; and soon after nine o'clock, on 
the morning of October 12th, he closed his eyes, and his soul 
passed peacefully from earth. 

" General Lee's physicians attributed his death in great 
measure to moral causes. The strain of his campaigns, the 
bitterness of defeat aggravated by the bad faith and insolence 
of the victor, sympathy wilth the subsequent sufferings of the 
Southern people, and the effort at calmness under these 
accumulated sorrows, seemed the sufficient and real causes 
that slowly but steadily imdermined General Lee's health 
and led to his death. Yet to those who saw his composure 
under the greater and lesser trials ^f life, and his justice and 
forbearance with the most unjust and uncharitable, it seemed 
scarcely credible that his serene soul was shaken by the evil 
that raged around him. 

" General Lee's closing hours were consonant with his 
noble and disciplined life. Never was more beautifully dis- 
played how a long and severe education of mind and charac- 
ter enables the soul to pass with equal step through this 
supreme ordeal ; never did the habits and qualities of a life- 
time, solemnly gathered into a few last sad hours, more 



niS DEATH AND FUNERAL OBSEQUIES. 451 

grandly maintain themselves amid the gloom and shadow of 
approaching death. The reticence, the self-contained com- 
posure, the obedience to proper authority, the magnanimity, 
and the Christian meekness, that marked all his actions, still 
preserved their sway, in spite of the inroads of disease, and 
the creeping lethargy that weighed down his faculties. 

" As the old hero lay in the darkened room, or with the 
lamp and hearth-fire casting shadows upon his calm, noble 
front, all the massive grandeur of his form, and face, and 
brow, remained ; and death seemed to lose its terrors, and to 
borrow a grace and dignity in sublime keeping with the life 
that was ebbing away. The great mind sank to its last 
repose, almost with the equal poise of health. The few 
broken utterances that evinced at times a wandering intel- 
lect were spoken under the influence of the remedies ad- 
ministered ; but as long as consciousness lasted, there was 
evidence that all the high, controlling influences of his whole 
life still ruled ; and even when stupor was laying its cold 
hand on the intellectual perceptions, the moral nature, with 
its complete orb of duties and affections, still asserted itself. 
A Southern poet has celebrated in song those last significant 
words, ' Strike the tent ; ' and a thousand voices were 
raised to give meaning to the uncertain sound, when the dy- 
ing man said, with emphasis, ' Tell Hill he 7nust come up ! ' 
These sentences serve to show most touchingly through what 
fields the imagination was passing ; but generally his words, 
though few, were coherent ; but for the most part indeed his 
silence was unbroken. 

" This self-contained reticence had an awful grandeur, in 
solemn accord with a life that needed no defense. Deeds 
which required no justification must speak for him. His 
voiceless lips, like the shut gates of some majestic temple, 
were closed, not for concealment, but because that within 
was holy. Could the eye of the mourning watcher have 
pierced the gloom that gathered about the recesses of that 
great soul, it would have perceived a Presence there full of 



453 REMINISCEXCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

an ineffable glory. Leaning trustfully upon the all-sustain- 
ing Arm, the man whose stature, measured by mortal stand- 
ards, seemed so great, passed from this world of shadows to 
the realities of the hereafter. 



" FUNEEAL. 

" On the morning of Wednesday, October 12th, the 
church-bells tolled forth the solemn announcement that Gen- 
eral Lee was dead. A whisper had passed from lip to lip 
that he was sinking ; and the anxious hearts of the people 
understood the signal of bereavement. "Without concert of 
action, labor was suspended in Lexington ; all stores, shops, 
and places of business, were closed ; and the exercises at the 
college. Military Institute, and schools, ceased without for- 
mal notice. Little children wept as they went to their 
homes ; the women shed tears as if a dear friend had gone 
from among them ; and the rugged faces of men, inured to 
hardship of war, blanched as the sorrowful word was spoken. 
The courtesies and little kindnesses that the departed had 
strewed with gentle hand among all classes of the community 
came back ; and memory recalled his stately form, not sur- 
rounded with the splendor of his fame, but in the softer 
light of a dear neighbor and friend who had vanished from 
sight forever. The sense of national calamity was lost in 
the tenderer distress of personal grief. General and heart- 
felt mourning followed, and the ordinary pursuits of business 
were not resumed until the next week. 

" In all the Southern States the people felt that the death 
of General Lee was a loss to every community and to each 
individual. By a common impulse they met in whatever 
bodies they were accustomed to assemble ; and in mass-meet- 
ings, corporate bodies, and voluntary societies, passed resolu- 
tions and voted addresses of respect and condolence. The 
pulpit, the bar, the bench, the halls of legislation, municipal 
authorities, benevolent associations, and all the organizations 




J^^A/^U = 



WENEKAL LEE'S OFFICE, JUST AS HE LEFT IT. 



HIS DEATH AND FUNERAL OBSEQUIES. 453 

through which men perform the functions of society, spon- 
taneously offered tributes to the memory of the ilhistrious 
dead. 

" The chosen orators of the land came forward to eulogize 
his fame. A whole people, who at his counsel had borne in 
silence five years of accumulated sufferings, gave way to sor- 
row at the death of their loved leader ; but it was a sorrow 
in v/hich tenderness was exalted by the dignity oS the dead, 
and the bereaved felt that they shared in the heritage of an 
undying name. It might seem invidious to select from testi- 
monials so general and so honorable any even to serve as 
illustrations or examples of the universal sorrow ; but it may 
be said of all that never was the sense of public calamity 
more completely chastened in its expression by deep and real 
feeling. 

" The authorities of Washington College having tendered 
to Mrs. Lee the college chapel as a burial-place for General 
Lee, the offer was accepted ; and 1^ o'clock p. m. on the 14th 
of October was the time fixed on for the removal of the re- 
mains from the residence of the deceased to the chapel, 
where they were to lie in state until Saturday, the 15th of 
October, the day appointed for the burial. At the hour 
named, the procession to convey the body was formed under 
the charge of Professor J. J. White as chief -marshal, aided by 
assistants appointed by the students. The escort of honor con- 
sisted of Confederate soldiers, marshaled by the Hon. J. K. Ed- 
mondson, late colonel of the Twenty-seventh Virginia Regi- 
ment. Following the escort came the hearse, preceded by the 
clergy, and attended by twelve pall-bearers, representing the 
trustees. Faculty, and students of Washington College, the 
authorities of the Yirginia Military Institute, the soldiers of 
the Confederate army, and the citizens of Lexington. Just 
in the rear of the hearse, Traveler, the noble white war-horse 
of General Lee, with saddle and bridle covered with crape, 
was led by two old soldiers. Then came in order the long 
procession composed of the college authorities and students, 



454 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

the corps of cadets with their Faculty, and the citizens. The 
body was borne to the college chapel, and laid in state on 
the dais; the procession passing slowly by, that each one 
might look upon the face of the dead. The body, attired in 
a simple suit of black, lay in a metallic coffin, strewed by 
pious hands with flowers and evergreens. The chapel, with 
the care of the remains, was then placed in charge of the 
guard of honor, appointed by the students from their own 
number. This guard kept watch by the coffin until the inter- 
ment, and gave to all who desired it the opportunity of 
looking once more upon the loved and honored face. 

" On Friday morning, October 14th, the college chapel was 
filled at nine o'clock with a solemn congregation of students 
and citizens, all of whom seemed deeply moved by the sim- 
ple exercises. Rev. Dr. Pendleton read from Psalm xxxvii. 
8-11 and 28-40, and with deej) feeling applied its lessons to 
the audience, as illustrated in the life and death of General 
Lee. The speaker had for forty-five years been intimately 
associated with this great and good man as fellow-student, 
comrade-in-arms, and pastor; and testified to his singular 
and consistent rectitude, dignity, and excellence under all 
the circumstances -of life, and to that meekness in him that 
under the most trying adversity knew not envy, anger, or 
complaint. ' The law of God was in his heart,' therefore 
did ' none of his steps slide.' ' Mark the perfect man and 
behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace.' The 
minister powerfully illustrated the text of his discourse in 
the career of this great and good man, and urged his hearers 
to profit by the example of this servant of the Lord. 

" The venerable Dr. White, Stonewall Jackson's pastor, 
and the Pev. John William Jones, of the Baptist Church, 
who had served as chaplain in the Confederate aiiny, and had 
since been intimately connected with General Lee, followed 
with brief but interesting remarks on the Christian character 
of the deceased. 

" On the 14th of October, General W. H. F. Lee, Cap- 



HIS DEATH AND FUNERAL OBSEQUIES. 455 

tain Robert E. Lee, and other members of tlie family, arrived ; 
and on this and the following day delegations from the 
Legislature of Yirginia and from various places in the Com- 
monvi^ealth reached Lexington over roads almost impassable 
from the ravages of the recent great flood. The flag of 
Virginia, draped in mourning, hung at half-mast above the 
college, badges of sorrow were everywhere visible, and a gen- 
eral gloom rested on the hearts of old and young. 

" Saturday, October 15th, was the day appointed for the 
funeral. A cloudless sky and a pure, bracing au' made a 
suitable close to the splendid and unsullied career of the 
man who was now to be consigned to the tomb. It was 
desired to avoid all mere pageantry and display, and that all 
the honors paid should accord with the simple dignity of 
the dead. This spirit prevailed in all the proceedings, and 
gave character to the ceremonies of the day. 

" It w^as thought proper that those who had followed his 
flag should lay the honored body of their chief in its last 
resting-place, and the escort of honor of Confederate soldiers, 
much augmented in numbers, and commanded by General B. 
T. Johnson, assisted by Colonel Edmondson, Colonel Maury, 
and Major Dorman, was assigned the post of honor in the 
procession. 

" The following account of the ceremonies is taken from 
a newspaper letter, written at the time, by Kev. J. Wm. 
Jones : 

" ' The order of the procession was as follows : 

♦ Music. 

Escort of Honor, consisting of Officers and Soldiers of the 

Confederate Army. 

Chaplain and other Clergy. 

Hearse and Pall-Bearers. 

General Lee's Horse. 

The Attending Physicians. 

Trustees and Faculty of Washington College. 

Diarnitaries of the State of Virg-inia. 



456 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

Visitors and Faculty of Virginia Military Institute. 

Other Representative Bodies and Distinguished Visitors. 

Alumni of Washington College, 

Citizens. 

Cadets Virginia Military Institute. 

Students Washington College as Guard of Honor. 

" ' At ten o'clock precisely the procession was foraied on 
the college-grounds in front of the president's house, and 
moved down Washington Street, up Jefferson Street to the 
Franklin Hall, thence to Main Street, where it was joined, 
in front of the hotel, by the representatives of the State of 
Virginia and other representative bodies in their order, and 
by the organized body of the citizens in front of the court- 
house, 

" ' The procession then moved by the street to the Virginia 
Militaiy Institute, v/here it was joined by the visitors, Facul- 
ty, and cadets of the Institute, in their respective places. 
The procession was closed by the students of Washington 
College as a guard of honor, and then moved up through 
the Institute and college grounds to the chapel. 

" ' The procession was halted in front of the chapel, when 
the cadets of the Listitute and the students of Washington 
College were marched through the college chapel past the 
remains, and were afterward drawn up in two bodies on the 
south side of the chapel. The remainder of the procession 
then proceeded into the chapel and were seated under the 
direction of the marshals. The gallery and side blocks were 
reserved for ladies. 

" ' As the procession moved off, to a solemn dirge by the 
Institute band, the bells of the town began to toll, and the 
Institute battery fired minute-guns, which were kept up dur- 
ing the whole exercises. 

" ' In front of the National Hotel the procession was joined 
by the committee of the Legislature, consisting of Colonel 
W. H. Taylor, Colonel E. Pendleton, W. L. Eiddick, Major 



HIS DEATH AND FUNERAL OBSEQUIES. 457 

Kelley, Geo. Walker, Z. Turner, H. Bowen, T. O. Jackson, 
and Marshall Hanger ; the delegation from the city of Staun- 
ton, headed by Colonel Bolivar Christian and other promi- 
nent citizens ; and such other delegations as had been able 
to stem the torrents which the great freshet had made of 
even the smaller streams. 

" ' It was remarked that the different classes who joined 
in the procession mingled into each other, and that among 
the Boards of the College and Institute, the Faculties, the 
students and cadets, the legislative committee, the delega- 
tions, and even the clergy, were many who might with equal 
propriety have joined the soldier guard of honor ; for they, 
too, had followed the standard of Lee in the days that tried 
men's souls. 

" ' Along the streets the buildings were all appropriately 
draped, and crowds gathered on the comers and in the bal- 
conies to see the procession pass. Not a flag floated above 
the procession, and nothing was seen that looked like an 
attempt at display. The old soldiers wore their ordinary 
citizens' di'ess, with a simple black riljbon in the lappel of 
their coats ; and Traveler, led by two old soldiers, had the 
simple trappings of mourning on his saddle. 

" '^ The Virginia Military Institute was very beautifully 
draped, and from its turrets hung at half-mast, and draped 
in mourning, the flags of aU of the States of the late South- 
ern Confederacy. 

" ' When the procession reached the Institute, it passed 
the corps of cadets drawn up in line, and a guard of honor 
presented arms as the hearse passed. When it reached the 
chapel, where an immense throng had assembled, the stu- 
dents and cadets, about six hundred and fifty strong, marched 
into the left door and aisle past the remains and out by the 
right aisle and door to their appropriate place. The rest of 
the procession then filed in. The family, joined by Drs. 
Barton and Madison, the attending physicians, and Colonels 
W. H. Taylor and C. S. Yenable, members of General Lee's 



458 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

staff during the war, occupied seats immediately in front of 
tlie pulpit ; and the clergy, of whom a number were present, 
Faculty of the College, and Faculty of the Institute, had 
places on the platform. 

" ' The coffin was covered with flowers and evergreens, 
while the front of the drapery thrown over it was decorated 
with crosses of evergreen and immortelles. 

" ' Rev. Dr. Pendleton, the long intimate personal friend 
of General Lee, his chief of artillery during the war, and his 
pastor the past five years, read the beautiful burial services 
of the Episcopal Church. No sermon was preached, and 
nothing said besides the simple service, in accordance with 
the known wishes of General Lee. 

" ' After the funeral services were concluded in the chap- 
el, the body w^as removed to the vault prepared for its recep- 
tion, and the concluding services read by the chaplain from 
the bank on the southern side of the chapel, in front of the 
vault. 

" ' There was sung, in the chapel, the 124th hymn of the 
Episcopal collection ; and, after the coffin was lowered into 
the vault, the congregation sang the grand old hymn, 

" How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord." 

" ' This was always a favorite hymn of General Lee's, and 
was, therefore, especially appropriate upon this sad occasion. 

" ' The vault is constructed of brick, lined with cement. 
The top just reaches the floor of the library, and is double 
capped with white marble, on which is the simple inscrip- 
tion : 

"ROBERT EDWARD LEE, 

BORN JANIJARY 19, 1807; 
DIED OCTOBER 12, 1S70." 

" ' This temporary structure is to be replaced by a beauti- 
ful sarcophagus, the design of which has been already com- 
mitted to Yalentine, the gifted Virginia sculptor.' 

" The simple services concluded, the great assemblage, 



HIS DEATH AND FUNERAL OBSEQUIES. 459 

with hearts awed and saddened, defiled through the vaulted 
room in which was the tomb, to pay the last token of respect 
to the mighty dead. Thus ended the funeral of General 
Robert E. Lee. 

" Since then has been laid by his side the noble matron, 
w^ho was every w^ay worthy to be his wife ; and a little space 
away the dear daughter, so like them both in gentleness and 
dignity, and yet with added graces of her own. Tributes of 
rare and beautiful flowers, wreaths of laurels, and crosses of 
immortelles, placed by loving hands, decorate the sacred spot. 
A student of the university, to which his name has added 
an interest coextensive with the Confederate South, watches 
beside the grave, and gathers strength in the service for 
self-consecration to a life of duty and honor. Above the 
tomb rises the chapel — which his Christian zeal constructed, 
itself a noble monument to the illustrious dead — and which 
needs appropriate decoration only to make it worthy of the 
hero who sleeps beneath." 

The sketch of Colonel Johnston has left the author noth- 
ing to add concerning the death and funeral obsequies of 
General Lee. He sleeps well in the beautiful Yalley of Vir- 
ginia, beneath the chapel he built, hard by the office which 
was the scene of his last and noblest labors, and which is 
preserved just as he left it the day of his fatal illness. The 
Blue Mountains of his loved Virginia sentinel his grave, and 
a daily guard of students delight to keep ward and watch at 
his tomb. The clear streams, as they flow along their emer- 
ald beds, seem to murmur his praises and roll on to the ocean 
his fame. From all parts of the land pilgrims come to visit 
his tomb, and loving hands bring fresh flowers, immortelles, 
and evergreens — fit emblems of the fadeless wreath which 
now decks his brow. 

Valentine — Virginia's gifted young sculptor — is now 
putting into the life-speaking marble that splendid creation 
of his genius which will at the same time worthily decorate 
the grave of Lee, and write his own name among the world's 



460 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

greatest artists. The soldiers and the noble women of the 
South have resolved to rear, on some suitable spot in Rich- 
mond, a splendid equestrian statue, and it is hoped that the 
day is not far distant when the Legislatm-es of the South, re- 
flecting the wishes of the people, will liberally aid this effort 
to honor the noblest of her sons. 

The " Southern Historical Society " is endeavoring to col- 
lect materials for the true history of Lee, of the army which 
he led, and of the cause for which he fought ; and we proudly 
commit the story of his mighty deeds and spotless life to the 
calm judgment of the future historian. 

Meantime, I bring this leaflet for the royal wreath with 
which the people of the whole country — North as well as 
South — will, in the years to come, deck the brow of Lee. 

The world mourns for Robert E. Lee, because one of its 
noblest heroes has fallen — those whose proud privilege it was 
to have been in any way associated with him, weep that the 
courteous gentleman, the warm-hearted, thoughtful friend, 
the humble, earnest Christian, comes not again to his accus- 
tomed places. But we " sorrow not as those who have no 
hope." He lived the life of a faithful soldier of the Cross — 
he fell at the post of duty with the harness on — ^he died in 
the full assurance of faith in Jesus, and now wears the Chris- 
tian's " crown of rejoicing " — 

" That crown with peerless glories bright, 
Which shall new lustre boast, 
When victors' wreaths and monarchs' gems 
Shall blend in common dust." 



APPENDIX. 

SELECTIONS FROM EULOGIES ON GENERAL LEE. 

The expressions of grief on the death of General Lee all 
over this country, and in Europe, would fill a volume much 
larger than this, and the author has hesitated to make even a 
few selections. But it seems fitting that the volume should be 
closed with several representatwe expressions of the common and 
universal sorrow. And, as a chapter has been devoted to the 
mutual love between the great leader and his soldiers, it seems 
appropriate to introduce the expression of the feelings of the 
Faculty and students of his college. The Southern Collegian^ 
the organ of the students of Washington College, thus announced 
his death : 

" We stop our paper from going to press in order to make the sad- 
dest announcement which our pen ever wrote : Our honored and loved 
president is no more. Ho expired at his residence, on Wednesday, Oc- 
tober 12th, at half-past nine o'clock a. m. 

" For the past twelve months his continued ill-health has been a 
source of great uneasiness to his friends, but we had fondly hoped that 
there were indications of improvement which promised long years of 
usefulness. Alas ! that we are compelled to announce his death in our 
first issue for the current session. The real cause of General Lee's death 
is to be sought far back of his recent attack. His splendid physical de- 
velopment would probably have withstood much severer illness, and 
have spared him for many years, had there not been moral causes which 
wore away his life. The crushing responsibilities incident to his posi- 
tion at the head of the Confederate Army ; his consuming anxiety as he 
saw his little band melt away before the countless host of their enemy ; 
his crowning grief as he felt compelled 'to yield to overwhelming num- 
bers and resources,' and see the flag he loved trail in the dust ; his con- 



462 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

tinned sorrow since, at -vritnessing the desolations of his loved South, 
and feeling unable to help her; and the opening of all his wounds afresh 
as his daily mails were flooded with piteous appeals from his maimed 
soldiers, or their widows and orphans — all these combined told with 
fatal effect upon him. He bore these things witli calm exterior, and with 
a heroism surpassing any that he ever exhibited on the field of battle? 
but they gradually wore away tlie very fibres of his great heart. 

" On Wednesday, the 28th of September, General Lee was more 
than usually occupied with his college duties, and in the afternoon pre- 
sided over a meeting of the vestry of his church, at which most impor- 
tant matters were considered, and which was protracted for three hours. 
"While sitting at the tea-table that evening, he was taken suddenly ill, 
and the most serious fears were entertained concerning him. But the 
next day he rallied, and continued to improve until last Monday, Octo- 
ber 10th, when he grew worse, and gradually passed away. His eminent 
physicians' (Drs. H. T. Barton and R. L. Madison) give the following 
as the proximate cause of his death : ' Mental and physical fatigue, in- 
ducing venous congestion of the brain, which, however, never proceeded 
as far as apoplexy or paralysis, but gradually caused cerebral exhaustion 
and death.' 

" There will be a natural anxiety to know about his last hours, and 
learn his last words ; but of these there is nothing to write. He only 
spoke in answer to questions about his physical condition, although 
rational nearly the whole time, and left absolutely nothing for the sen- 
sational press to seize upon. He died as he lived, calmly and quietly, in 
the full assurance of the Christian's faith, and with the brightest evi- 
dence that, in 'passing over the river,' he has (with his great lieutenant) 
' rested under the shade of the trees ' of paradise." 

Suitable resolutions were passed by a mass-meeting of the 
students, and by the two Literary Societies. 

The action of the Faculty is appended, as being not only a • 
graceful tribute to the memory of General Lee, but also an ex- 
cellent epitome of his life : 

" General Robert E. Lee, President of Washington College, died at 
his residence on the 12th day of October, 1870, at half-past 9" a. m. 

" The Faculty of the institution over which he has presided for five 
years testify that this dispensation of God has brought to them, person- 
ally, a grief as severe as the loss it has inflicted upon the college is irrep- 
arable. 

"Eulogy has exhausted itself upon the virtues and genius of Presi- 



SELECTIONS FROM EULOGIES ON GENERAL LEE. 4G3 

dent Lee. It becomes friendship to be as simple in its tribute to the dead 
as his modesty while living would have sanctioned, and to let the glory 
of his now ended life speak the praise due to its extraordinary incidents, 
and to its permanent influence for good upon his country and the world. 

"He was born on the 19th day of January, 1807, at Stratford House, 
"Westmoreland County, Virginia. He was the son of General Henry 
Lee, to whom Revolutionary fame attached the sobriquet of 'Light- 
Horse Harry.' His father was the ardent personal and political friend of 
"Washington. Under his training his son was early taught to love Vir- 
ginia as his country ; for that father had said with impressive emphasis, 
what he confirmed on a solemn public occasion, ' No consideration on 
earth could induce me to act a part, however gratifying to me, which 
could be construed into disregard or foregetfulness of the Common- 
wealth.' 

" At eleven years of age Robert E. Lee was fatherless. His boy- 
hood was pure, ingenuous, and dutiful. 

"As the son of Virginia, he entered "West Point as a cadet in 1825, 
and graduated, without a demerit, at the head of his class. He was 
commissioned a lieutenant of engineers in 1829. 

" "When the Mexican War began, he was a captain in the Engineer 
Corps ; and when victory marshaled the army of the United States 
in the capital of the enemy, the glory of its chief, by his own testimony 
and that of the country, was due, in a large degree, to the genius of 
Lee, whose numerous brevets were but a small tribute to his sagacity 
and skill as an officer, and to his courage and chivalry as a soldier. 

" The war closed with the acquisition of a new empire to the Union, 
so rich and powerful that it remunerated the country tenfold for all its 
cost in effort and treasure. 

"After the close of the war Colonel Lee continued to serve in the 
Engineer Department of the army until the year 1852, when he was 
appointed to the distinguished position of Superintendent of the "West 
Point Military Academy. His administration there, which continued 
until 1855, was marked by signal ability and success, and to it he owed 
that practical experience in scholastic affairs which contributed so 
largely to his usefulness in his late career as President of Washington 
College, He next served upon the western frontier as lieutenant- 
colonel of cavalry, in the regiment commanded by Colonel Albert Syd- 
ney Johnston. His last memorable service in the United States Army 
was in the suppression of the ' John Brown rebellion ' at Harper's Fer- 
ry, Virginia, in October, 1859. 

" Political conflict, growing out of sectional differences, and aggra- 
vated by the question of rights in the territory acquired from Mexico, 



464 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

reached the height of a strife in arms on the 15th day of April, 1861. 
To that strife President Lincoln summoned Virginia on that day, against 
her sister States of the South. On the 17th day of April, 1861, she re- 
jected his summons, and cast in her lot with the Southern- States. 

" To Colonel Lee was thus presented the alternative of hearing the 
sword he had assumed, as a son of Virginia, for or against his native 
Commonwealth. A solemn conviction of duty, confirmed in his nature 
by a father's teachings, permitted no hesitancy in the decision. He 
came to Virginia, and, at her invitation, drew his sword in her defense 
and under her authority. How his calm patriotism, his consummate 
genius, and his heroic fortitude, bore him during the four years in 
which his country contended against numbers and resources vastly dis- 
proportioned to her own, history has recorded, and the world can never 
forget. 

" On the 9th day of April, 1865, he sheathed his sword, which his 
distinguished adversary did not ask to be surrendered, upon his parole 
of honor to bear arms no longer against the victor, and to live the 
life of a peaceful citizen of a State of the Union. 

"That parole of honor he has never tarnished by the slightest 
departure from its stipulations. He bore the confiscation of his prop- 
erty, the obloquy upon his name, the defeat and suffering of his fellow- 
countrymen, without a murmur, and in the patient and silent conscious- 
ness of a strict and rigid adherence to duty in his past career. 

" He was called to the presidency of Washington College on the 28th 
of September, 1865. His executive ability, his enlarged views of a liberal 
culture, his extraordinary powers in the government of men, his wonder- 
ful influence over the mind of the young, and his steady and earnest de- 
votion to his duties, made the college spring, as if by the touch of magic, 
from its depression after the war, to its present firm condition of per- 
manent and wide-spread usefulness. 

" As president, in his relations to the Faculty, he was gentle, cour- 
teous, and considerate — toward the students he was firm in discipline, 
yet forbearing, sympathetic, and encouraging — to all he was a model of 
an elevated Christian and an upright gentleman. 

" During the last five years, in the discharge of his official duties as 
President of Washington College, which were entered upon under most 
trying circumstances, and maintained with serene patience and noble 
devotion to the end of his life, he has exhibited qualities not less illus- 
trious than any which he displayed in his military career ; and which, 
as they were necessary to complete the perfect harmony of his character, 
have thus connected his fame, in a peculiar sense, with the history of 
Washington College. 



SELECTIONS FROM EULOGIES ON GENERAL LEE. 465 

" He died, as ho bad lived, without fear, and with the reverence of 
all good men ; calmly patient, in the consciousness of a virtuous life and 
of rectitude of purpose; and in that complete reliance upon God which 
had sustained him throughout all the changes of fortune. 

"The Faculty bear this simple testimony to the virtuous life, the 
simple and genuine piety, and the exalted genius of their illustrious and 
beloved president — and tender to his widow and children, and to his 
mourning countrymen, their hearts' sympathy in the common calamity 
of his irreparable loss. 

" It is a deep satisfaction to receive his revered remains beneath the 
chapel he had built ; and it will be to the college which he loved an 
unspeakable blessing that, though his presence is removed, the memory 
of his noble life will remain to us as an incentive to duty, and as an 
abiding inspiration to the youth of the country, as they gather at this 
last scene of his labors, to emulate his virtues and to follow his great 
example ! 

" Be it therefore resolved, That in the midst of the severe calamity 
which has befaUen us, in the death of our beloved president, we, the 
Faculty of Washington College, experience a profound pleasure and 
pride in recognizing the fact that the fame of General Lee, while it 
belongs to the whole country, is, in an especial sense, the heritage of 
Washington College ; and that it is our duty, as it is our privilege, to 
provide here suitable memorials whereby this precious possession shall be 
acknowledged, a^nd his name publicly held in grateful remembrance by 
this college, for all future time. 

" Resolved, That a committee be appointed to confer with a like 
committee of the Board of Trustees, and report measures and plans for 
the erection of a suitable monument to General Lee, in the room in 
which his remains are to be interred ; and, further, to consider and re- 
commend such other monuments or memorials as may be deemed appro- 
priate in the college. 

" Resolved, Tliat these committees be requested jointly to make 
arrangements for the delivery of a eulogy on the life and character of 
General Lee, in the college chapel, on the 19th day of January, being the 
next anniversary of his birthday ; and we further express the wish that 
this anniversary, like the birthday of Washington, shall be hereafter 
always celebrated in this college, 

" Resolved, That the said committees be requested also to confer and 
report upon the subject of so amending the present charter of Washing- 
ton College that the name of this institution may hereafter express, in fit 
conjunction, the immortal names of Washixoton and Lee, whose lives 
were so similar in their perfect renown, and with both of whom equally, 

30 



466 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

by singular good fortune, it is entitled to be associated in its future 
history. 

" Resolved, That as a further expression of our deep sorrow, we will 
wear the badge of mourning during the remainder of the present session. 

" Resolved, That a copy of the above minute be communicated to the 
widow and family of the deceased, and published in the Southern Col- 
legian and the Virginia Gazette.'''' 

The following report of a meeting of the Faculty and stu- 
dents of the college is taken from the Southern Collegian and 
inserted as an appropriate expression of the feelings with which 
the Faculty and students returned to their work after the funeral 
of their great president : 

" MEETING OF THE FACULTY AND STUDENTS OF "WASHINGTON 

COLLEGE. 

" A very touching meeting was held on the morning of the 17th 
of October, in the college chapel. It had been decided to resume the 
regular college exercises, and it was understood that before doing so the 
professors desired to meet with the students, and have a few words of 
quiet conference. Accordingly, the chapel was filled with a deeply sol- 
emn audience of students, the Faculty, and a few citizens. 

'"■ After the usual chapel services. Rev. Dr. Kirkpatrick, Professor of 
Moral Philosophy, arose and said, in substance, that it had been deemed 
fitting til at the students and the Faculty should have a season of confer- 
ence together before resuming the duties which had been so sadly inter- 
rupted. The Faculty deeply felt that a great change had' taken place, 
and that their responsibilities had been greatly increased. He desired, 
in behalf of the Faculty, to thank the students for the uniform propriety 
of deportment which had marked the conduct of each one of them dur- 
ing this season of deep aflfliction. He had expected it to be so, and had 
not been disappointed. He said that the Faculty and students were now 
bound together by the tenderest ties of a common grief, and that their 
duties to each other and to the college were sanctified by the memories 
of the past. 

" Standing here in the very presence of the one they all honored and 
loved, the Faculty pledged themselves to increased efforts to carry out 
his wishes, and to discharge faithfully their duties. They felt urged to 
so conduct the affairs of the college as to make it a fitting monument to 
President Lee. And he earnestly appealed to the students so to do their 
part, so to unite with the Faculty, as to rear a monument to our great 



SELECTIONS FROM EULOGIES ON GENERAL LEE. 467 

chieftain more durable than marble, and more precious and more honor- 
able than the most costly material. The instruction of the college 
would be the same as heretofore : in its ' discipline ' and the general 
oversight they would sadly miss their honored president. But the Fac- 
ulty confidently hoped that the students would so deport themselves — 
so be a law unto themselves, and so remember the example, advice, and 
ardent wishes of our loved friend — as to give no occasion for the exercise 
of ^discipline'' in the ordinary acceptation of the term. 

*' Hon. J. Eandolph Tucker next briefly addressed the students. He 
said that the saddest thing connected with the death of a great man was 
that it broke the thread of his life-plans, and left them incomplete. 
Such was the case with General Lee. He had come to Washington Col- 
lege five years ago — had found it in a low state — with but four profess- 
ors, with much of its apparatus destroyed by the Federal army, and had 
conceived a plan for raising it to the first rank among the institutions of 
learning in the land, and making it worthy of the Father of liis Country. 

" He has accomplished much. He has increased the corps of profess- 
ors from four to nine in number in the academic and scientific depart- 
ments, and had established a law school with two professors. He had 
other views for enlarging the teaching capacity of the institution, not 
yet consummated, but soon to be complete. 

"Death put an end to his labors. Shall the good he did survive him, 
or shall his success be as fleeting as human life ? It was for those who 
survive him — trustees, Faculty, and students — to answer. 

" This was the child of his declining years, left fatherless by his death. 
It is our duty to nurture and foster it — to guard and protect it — and 
promote its interests, until it shall become the noblest monument forever 
of his devotion to duty and his enlightened views of an enlarged cultiva- 
tion for his young countrymen. 

" "We shall earnestly endeavor to carry out all his policy — to conduct 
the schools of the college as they have always been, and to make it in 
the present and in the future worthy of his name, and to advance it to 
its proper rank among the foremost institutions of the country ; and we 
cordially invite the young men here to unite with us in preserving the 
integrity of the plans of the late president, and to carry them out to their 
highest success, according to his views and earnest hopes, so that it 
may be to the youth of the country a perpetual memorial of his name, 
and a permanent monument to his genius. 

" Colonel William Preston Johnston then addressed the students as 
follows : 

" ' My Feiends : The Faculty have requested me to address to you a 
few remarks in view of the position in which Washington College stands 



468 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

to-day. While I feel that what has been already so well said is suffi- 
cient, and that words of mine are scarcely necessary, I do not decline 
the duty. It is eminently fit that on occasions of interest the Faculty 
and students si] ould confer together, and such an occasion as this has not 
happened in the history of this college, and will not again in all time. 
You are now assembled as one of the estates of this commonwealth of 
letters, to listen to the voice of your elders, and, what has even a 
greater moral significance to you, to learn how best you are to perform 
your parts in the scheme of self-government. I am using no new lan- 
guage ; I am but repeating the thoughts and the words of all the days 
and all the years in which we have been associated as instructors and 
pupils. A great part of the government of this college has been in your 
hands, and you have manifested in your moral conduct and intellectual 
progress what can be done through liberty, inspired by love and regu- 
lated by law. In all the recorded past, no epoch has excelled in lustre 
and development the period of Pericles, when free Athens under his 
enlightened guidance made herself immortal. The republic whose citi- 
zens are gathered this morning within these walls has obeyed with will- 
ing hearts a leader who had the virtues of Pericles, without one blemish, 
one spot, one stain. In him duty disdained to yield to expediency, and 
Aristides himself would have owned liim as a peer in virtue. It was 
the dying boast of Pericles that he had made no Athenian weep ; but of 
our chief it may be said that for no act of his has any son of the South 
ever had cause to blush. With such a leader, with such an exemplar 
before our eyes, it has not been hard to do right. It would have been 
hard to do wrong, to go far astray, and face our consciences in that 
august presence. But how is it now ? He has gone from among us ; 
and whose calm prudence and serene majesty of soul will now rebuke 
the hasty word or precipitate act ? whose tender counsel will restrain 
the erring step ? whose broad charity will cover our multitudinous trans- 
gressions? How can we replace the lost? Ah! my friends, that is im- 
possible. For, where in all the ranks of the living will be found his 
like ? We will not make the vain attempt to supply his place, but we 
will seek to perpetuate his influence. If you feel as I do, the guide and 
guardian of the conduct and career of this college and of its Faculty and 
students, will still be this mighty spirit of Lee. Trouble not your minds 
as to his successor. To the same wisdom that selected General Lee in 
his retirement, and secured his acceptance of this post, you may trust to 
provide for you an executive officer who will bring no discredit upon 
the college, or upon the memory of the dead. 

" ' When the tremendous conflict in which for four years he upheld 
the fortunes of half a continent had ended, and finding success denied 



SELECTIONS FROM EULOGIES ON GENERAL LEE. 469 

to him, lie yielded to overwhelming numbers, he turned his face to the 
desolated land for which he had done and suffered so much, he stretched 
forth his hand to stanch the wounds he had been unable to avert. In 
the matchless dignity of voiceless woe that hand has done the work it 
found to do. His cultured intellect, his finished education, his ripe 
experience of men and things, his practical knowledge as an educator, his 
great executive ability, and all the forces of a mind vast yet exceed- 
ingly well balanced, were applied to the development of this college. 
He sketched the comprehensive plan and wrought out the details of the 
work, that in chaste and simple beauty to us is to rest hke a capital 
upon the solid and splendid shaft of his civic and national renown ; and 
"Wasliiugton College stands as the last and crowning achievement of a 
useful and glorious life. His labor is finished ; the weary is at rest ; but 
the magnificent structure that he conceived and planned, and whose 
foundation he has laid, is left for completion to his country. "We rest in 
an abiding faith that our country will not suffer to sink into dust and 
forgetfulness this last enduring mounment of liis fame ; and we may re- 
turn to our appointed tasks and daily duties with cheerfulness and en- 
ergy, knowing that therein we best carry out his wishes and perpetuate 
his fame. 

" ' You need from me no outline of a moral code, no exhortations to 
special duties, for I sum up all by pointing to the memory of the man 
you honored and revered. 

*" General Lee's plan is to be carried out in the spirit in which it 
was conceived ; and wo trust that time will show that neither Faculty 
Qor students have relaxed in their zeal, or are weary in well-doing. But 
we enter on this year's work with saddened hearts under the chastening 
of a crushing calamity. Let us try to realize, as far as maj' be, the 
great thought of our dead leader, and make "human virtue equal to 
buman calamity." ' 

" Colonel "William Allan next spoke as follows: 

" ' It is not eight years since the great soldier who lies in yonder 
cemetery fell at the head of his troops, and in the moment of victory. 
In the order that General Lee issued announcing his death, he reminded 
the corps that had followed Jackson through so many perils, that, while 
a whole nation would weep at his tomb and cherish his virtues, it was 
their privilege to be in a peculiar manner the guardians of his honor and 
his memory. Those veterans felt this to be their noblest trust, and 
from the day that Stuart gave the order at Chancellorsville, " Charge, 
and remember Jackson!" to the last scene of the war, it was to them a 
sacred inspiration. On many a bloody field the weak arm was nerved 
and the dying heart consoled by the consciousness that the trust had 



470 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

been fitly kept ; and it is a proud satisfaction to the survivors that, 
though the tliirty thousand whom Jackson had commanded at Clian- 
cellorsville had dwindled to a few hundred at Appomattox, these had yet 
the honor of firing the last gun, and that the order for surrender found 
them in line of battle and engaged with the foe. 

" ' From this day, gentlemen, a similar trust is confided to us — • 
the authorities, the alumni, and the students of "Washington College. 
"While a mighty people bow in crushing sorrow over the tomb of Eobert 
E. Lee, and do reverence to his ashes, the privilege and obligation rest 
especially with us to perpetuate the memory and influence of his 
virtues. His last great work, that to which he devoted the latest and 
in many respects the grandest years of his life, drops unfinished from 
his hands into ours. Let us take it up and carry it forward, feeling 
conscious, as we must, that this is the most pleasing and appropriate 
tribute that grateful afiection can pay to the illustrious dead. 

" ' His plans for the organization of this college were of the wisest 
and most complete character. They are his legacy to us. "What honor 
80 noble can we do to his name as to realize his intentions, and make 
this what he desired it should be, the first institution of the land ? In 
so doing we shall but follow in his own footsteps. For the controlling 
motive with liim in selecting this particular place as the scene of his 
labors was the fact that hero they would constitute a tribute to the 
memory of "Washington. And the reflection, though sad, renders the 
obligation resting on us all the more sacred, that, less fortunate than his 
great prototype, there remains but this work alone of all the labors of 
a lifetime to testify to future ages of a grand and noble career. Mis- 
fortune has swept away all he strove for, save this. If the memory 
of his virtues is to be kept green through coming time, it must be 
done here, gentlemen, and through the influences which go out from 
here. 

" ' As has been already said, the trustees and Faculty of "Washington 
College recognize the high privilege and sound obligation that rest 
upon us all, and their most earnest and devoted efforts will be 'directed 
toward carrying out the designs of General Lee, and in this way toward 
rearing a fitting memorial of his character. But theirs is only a part 
of the work. W"itJi you rest the interests and welfare of the institution. 
Let the affection which you now feel and manifest for it continue with 
you as a cherished sentiment through life. Guard constantly, both 
here and elsewhere, its honor; labor for its prosperity and usefulness; 
remember it always as a trust committed to your keeping by the hero 
who watched over you with the wisdom of a sage, and the tenderness 
of a father.' " 



SELECTIONS FROM EULOGIES ON GENERAL LEE. 471 

The Virginia Military Institute, located in Lexington, and in- 
deed all of the colleges of the South, gave utterance to similar 
sentiments. The following may be given : 

" Supeelntendent'8 Office, Virginia Military Institute, ) 
Lexington, Va., October 12, 18T0. J 

"The Academic Board met at the call of the superintendent at 
10 A, M, 

"Present, all the members except General G. W. 0. Lee. 

" The superintendent announced to the Academic Board the death 
of General E. E. Lee, whereupon, on motion, the following minute was 
ordered to be spread upon the records of the board. 

" We feel, in a degree which no words can adequately express, sor- 
row at the death of one who was so distinguished by position, so illus- 
trious for his deeds, and so noble in character. 

" Our whole land has suffered by the blow, and our whole land will 
mourn, while distant nations will not withhold the sympathy awakened 
by the death of one whose life is a part of the history of the world, and 
whose moral excellences inspired love and admiration in the hearts of 
all the good. 

" To us, as a Faculty, however, the blow comes with peculiar force. 

" "We, individually, knew him as a neighbor and friend ; but, as a 
Faculty, we were bound to him by closer ties, as a fellow-laborer in the 
same cause, and as the father of one of the professors of the Virginia 
Military Institute. 

"We therefore feel a particular grief, and claim the privilege of 
special mourners. 

" To Mrs. Lee and her family we offer the expression of our sympathy 
for his death, of our pride in the life of our hero, and of our assurance 
of the glorious immortality of the earnest Christian. 

" To the Faculty of our sister institution we beg to convey our sense 
of the great loss they have sustained by the death of their president, 
whose efforts in the cause of education have shed such lustre upon Wash- 
ington College. 

" Hesolved, That General Smith, Superintendent, and Commander 
Maury, be appointed a committee to present the above extract from 
our record to Mrs. Lee and the Faculty of Washington College, with 
the tender of our cooperation as a Faculty in whatever mode may be 
acceptable in the solemnities of the occasion. 

" A true extract fi'om the minutes of the Academic Board. 

" F. H. Smith, Je., Secretary.'''' 



472 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" Oeneral Order No. 26. 

" HEADQ0AKTEE3, VIRGINIA MILITARY INSTITUTE, Ootobet' 13, 18T0. 

" The painful duty devolves upon the superintendent to announce to 
the professors, ofBcers, and cadets of the Virginia Military Institute, 
the death of General E. E. Lee. 

" He died at his residence at half-past nine o'clock this morning, 
after an illness of two weeks. 

"Every heart in our Southern land will receive the sad tidings of 
the death of General Lee as a personal bereavement. All will feel it to 
be such, for he had secured by his heroic devotion to duty, by his un- 
bending moral rectitude, by his elevated Christian principles, and by his 
tender, sympathizing regard for others, not only the admiration, but 
also the love of his countrymen. 

" Moving among us as he did, in his earnest yet unobtrusive work 
as the president of our sister institution, Washington College, we have 
witnessed in his daily life the exhibition of those noble qualities which 
have made his name known and honored throughout the civilized 
world. 

"It is meet, then, that the professors, officers, and cadets, of the Vir- 
ginia Military Institute should honor the memory of Lee. 

" It is therefore ordered : 

" That all academic duties and drills be suspended until after his in- 
terment. 

"That the battalion flag be draped in mourning for the period of six 
months. 

" That the professors, officers, and cadets, "wear the usual badge of 
mourning for the same period. 

"That the professors, officers, and cadets, attend in a body his 
funeral, and unite in paying sucb honors to the memory of the illustri- 
ous dead as shall be consistent with the wishes of his family, and the ar- 
rangements of the authorities of "Washington College. 

" By command of Major-General F. H. Smith, 

" F. H. Smith, Jr., Adjutant V. If. /." 

The following is the conclusion of an address delivered at 
the Kentucky Military Institute, by Rev. R. A, Holland : 

" I rejoice, young gentlemen, that I can find an embodiment of this 
sublime integrity of character in a hero — not of the past, but of the 
present — not of some distant realm, but of your own suffering land — 
not of foreign birth, but of blood brother to that which in your veins 
leaps with enthusiasm at the mention of his name. 



SELECTIONS FROM EULOGIES ON GENERAL LEE. 473 

"I rejoice that we possess a model of manhood worth more to our 
noblest attributes than all the fortunes spent in the terrible war that 
unveiled his grandeur to our gaze. 

" Whatever may have been the errors of the South — errors for which, 
if they were committed, she has made sufficient atonement in costliest 
hecatombs — the world is indebted to her for a gift that will enrich man- 
kind forever. That gift is the example of a man who, in civil war, 
when hate rages to flesh its fangs in hostile hearts, wins the admiration of 
his enemies ; who charms envy into love and awes malice into silence ; 
who from the smoke and carnage of battle comes forth with a brow 
unstained by dishonor and hands unclotted by cruelty ; who, although 
victor in a hundred fights against such odds of troops and treasures as 
skill never vanquished before, allows no word of boasting to soil his 
pure lips and acknowledges his success only in modest ascriptions of 
gratitude to the Lord of hosts ; who, marching forward in the perilous 
path of duty, refuses a moment's pause for dalliance with that fame 
which others must follow, but which, hke one entranced, tracks hia 
steps and courts the condescension of his kingly glance ; who, as he 
kneels under triumphs, rises above reverses, and when the last blow is 
struck and genius can no longer cope with force, surrenders his sword 
with the same equanimity with which he had ever wielded it, and re- 
ceives it back in mute testimonial that none but himself is worthy to 
wear a weapon whose blade blazes with a lustre of purity and prowess 
bright as the cimeters of Eden's sentinels. 

" Great in victory, greater still in defeat ; great as descried through 
the red haze of war, greater still as contemplated through the clear air 
of peace ; great as a general, but greatest as a man — behold in him a 
character which, if not perfect, conceals its faults with the effulgence 
of its virtues, even as the sun conceals the spots on its dazzling disk. I 
need not call his name ; nor need History, when she carves for the high- 
est niche in her Pantheon a statue to represent manhood apotheosized 
by its own glory, inscribe beneath it a name which the very design of 
the statue speaks aloud — the immortal name of Lee." 

The following was the conclusion of a sermon preached in 
the First Presbyterian Church, Nashville, on Sunday afternoon, 
October 23, 1870, by Rev. Dr. T. V. Moore, the discourse being 
delivered at the request of a meeting of citizens, and before an 
immense congregation of the best people of the city : 

"It was with all this heroic sense of duty that General Lee tendered 
his services first to his own State, and then to the Confederacy, of which 



474 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

she became a component part. And he knows but little of this great 
captain who thinks that it was with any thing of a divided heart that he 
linked himself to the fortunes of the Southern people. His whole heart 
was with tliem to the last sad close ; and I speak that which I know, 
when I say that he would gladly have laid him down in a soldier's grave, 
had such been the will of God, rather than survive the cause for which 
he fought. Indeed, he can scarcely be said to have survived it, for he 
has been slowly dying ever since. His physicians testify that there was 
no reason, in his splendid physique, why he should not have lived for 
many years ; but those who have closely observed him since the fatal 
field of Appomattox, have seen that he received his death-wound there ; 
and, although his manly spirit has been hiding it the while, the heart 
bled on in secret, wrung by the woes and wrongs of his beloved people, 
by the sorrowful letters he was continually receiving from maimed vet- 
erans, impoverished widows, and suffering orphans, vainly begging for 
some opening to earn their bread, and by the sorrowful struggles of his 
people to repair their fallen fortunes, struggles so often doomed to the 
crudest disappointment, and that, therefore, it is sadly true that, 
although for five long, weary years his mighty heart was breaking, yet 
at the last it did give way, and he died of a broken heart, a victim of 
the war, as truly as any of his heroic comrades in arms, whose heart's 
blood flowed more swiftly and easily on the battle-field. 

"And yet with all his intensity of devotion to the Southern cause, 
there was mingled none of that bitterness and fierceness that a civil war 
is so likely to engender, and of which ours contains such mournful illus- 
trations. Under provocations the most severe, his calm and well-poised 
mind never yielded to the impulse of vindictive emotion, and never 
allowed itself to be goaded beyond the rules of honorable warfare. 
When lie led his armies into Pennsylvania, he issued the most stringent 
orders against pillaging and the wanton destruction of private property, 
and severely punished the slightest infraction of these orders, even to 
the disturbance of a fence needlessly, so that the people on his line of 
march acknowledged that they fared better at his hands than they did in 
the hands of the troops sent to oppose him, their own professed friends 
and protectors. It was this sublime elevation above the fierce, vindic- 
tive passions of the hour that excited, even during the war, the wonder 
of his enemies. 

"There was, indeed, in his nature a singular vein of gentleness and 
tenderness, softening his sterner attributes of character. His natural 
purity and dignity, moulded by the etiquette of military life, gave him a 
certain stateliness of bearing, before which meanness and vice instinc- 
tively shrank, so that no thoroughly bad man could feel at ease in hia 



SELECTIONS FROM EULOGIES ON GENERAL LEE. 475 

presence, any more than could Satan in the presence of Ithuriel. But 
in the company of children, and especially of young girls, there was a 
winning gentleness and a playful familiarity that removed all reserve 
from them, and made him a special favorite of children. Indeed, among 
them he was a child again; and, had he heen in that small circle within 
which Jesus set up a little child to teach the lesson of true greatness, there 
perhaps would have been no heart there which, in its warming love to 
the little, sweet, unconscious teacher, would have been better fitted than 
his to receive the deep and wise instructions of the Master. It was 
thus in the fine harmonious balance of head and heart, and the even 
development of the powers of each, without any exaggeration, that we 
find the beautiful and full-orbed completeness of his nature, linking him 
in deathless association with that peerless man whom he so much re- 
sembled, who, in the memorable words uttered by one of his own rel- 
atives, ' was first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his 
countrymen.' 

" There are many passages of grandeur in his long and honorable 
life, but the grandest of them all was its closing five years, when the 
fine gold of his nature stood the stern and fiery test of adversity. It 
was a wondrous spectacle to see him defending the beleaguered capital of 
the Confederacy with an army of half-clad, half-fed, and half-equipped 
men, outnumbered six to one, and so reduced at last in numbers that 
had they formed a line behind the long sweep of fortifications they were 
defending, that line would have been so attenuated that the men could 
scarcely have touched each other with their muskets, and yet a band of 
heroes, who felt no throb of anxiety or dread as long as they knew that 
that noble gray head, with its falcon-eye, was watching over them with 
more than a father's tenderness and care. But other men liave been 
great warriors, yet only great in success. It was his to show his utter- 
most greatness in failure. Other men had conquered victory ; it was his 
sublime preeminence to conquer defeat, and transform it into the grand- 
est triumph. Other warriors have betrayed ambition, cruelty, and ava- 
rice in success, weakness, littleness, and selfishness in disaster; but he 
developed the unselfish nobleness of his nature when, bowing submis- 
sively to the resistless decrees of Providence, he sheathed his unsullied 
blade ; and refusing the most tempting offers to engage in commercial 
and monetary enterprises ; refusing the gifts that a grateful though im- 
poverished people longed to lavish on him; refusing every attempt to 
bring him where public applause would so heartily have greeted him 
— he retired to the cloistered shades of his chosen position, without 
a word of repining or bitterness, and consecrated himself to the youth 
of his country, not to breathe into them a spirit of vindictive hate ; not 



476 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

to train them for future political struggles merely, but to lead them to 
Jesus, and make them noble citizens, by making them sincere Christians. 
Hon. H. W. Hilliard, ex-member of the Federal Congress, made a speech 
in Augusta, Ga., at the meeting there held to do honor to the memory 
of General Lee, in which he said : 

'"An oifer, originating in Georgia, and I believe in this very city, 
vras made to him to place an immense sum of money at his disposal if he 
would consent to reside in the city of New York, and represent Southern 
commerce. Millions would have flowed to him. But he declined. He 
said : " No, I am grateful, but I have a self-imposed task, which I must 
accomphsh. I have led the young men of the South in battle ; I have 
seen many of them fall under my standard. I shall devote my life now 
to training young men to do their duty in life." ' 

" Oh ! does history present a spectacle that in grandeur can be com- 
pared with that ? An English nobleman, standing beside the corpse of 
his dead boy, exclaimed to one who sought to comfort him, ' I had 
rather have my dead son than all the living sons in England.' And so, 
with a truer, fonder pride, may we exclaim, ' We would rather have 
our dead hero than all the living heroes of Christendom.' 

" The closing scene of his life was calm and peaceful, as became a 
Christian soldier. "When Stonewall Jackson lay dying, his mind was 
wandering over the scenes of the battle-field, leading his fiery columns 
through the smoke and thunder of the conflict, until his spirit seemed to 
emerge from these troubled scenes and catch a glimpse of the sweet 
fields beyond the swelling flood, when he softly whispered, ' Let us pass 
over the river and rest under the trees,' and he sweetly fell asleep to 
awake where the ' river of water of life, clear as crystal, comes forth 
from the throne of God and the Lamb.' Somewhat similar was the dy- 
ing scene of our great captain. In the wanderings of his delirium he, too, 
was once more at the head of those battle-scarred columns of veterans, 
whom he had so often led to victory. Perhaps, again he spurred his 
fiery charger, as in the terrible scenes of Spottsylvania, when his daunt- 
less men seized his bridle-rein, and refused to move a step until their 
beloved leader had withdrawn from danger, when, with one wild shout 
of fierce enthusiasm, they hurled themselves upon the serried masses of 
the foe. Perhaps he moved once more on the bloody heights of Gettys- 
burg, where he nobly assumed the responsibility of disasters that were, 
doubtless, due mainly to others, and was greater in failure than other 
men in success. And it was a striking coincidence with the dying scene 
of Jackson, as well as a noble tribute to a gallant man, who poured out 
his blood in the trenches of Petersburg, that they should both have called 
for the brave and high-souled A. P. Hill in the wanderings of delirium. 



SELECTIONS FROM EULOGIES OK GENERAL LEE. 477 

At last, as if he saw that the hour had come, when 'the earthly house 
of this tabernacle ' was to be taken down, he exclaimed, ' Strike the 
tent ! ' and Death obeyed. 

' His spirit, with a bound, 

Burst its encumbering clay ; 
His tent at noontide on the ground, 
A darkened ruin lay.' 

"He passed over the river to recline under the trees, where 'the 
wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.' 

"And now we must leave this noble life to teach its own lessons, for 
time will not permit their elaboration. Young men, who have idolized 
the name of Lee, will you not heed his deep and earnest desire that you 
should all be real Christians, and come to Jesus ? Confederate soldiers, 
I have seen some of your comrades, and possibly some of you, following 
this great leader, ragged, hungry, tracking the snow with blood from 
your naked feet, and yet cheerful, because you were following him. Oh ! 
will you not follow him now, as he followed Christ — follow him to the 
cross, follow him to the crown, follow him to heaven? Let his manly 
voice come down to you from the crystal battlements, saying, ' Come up 
hither! ' and may you meet him there ! Brethren and sisters, of every 
name and rank, of every section and shade of opinion, you may differ or 
agree with me in my estimate of this great man, but you cannot differ 
with me in the conclusion that it is a blessed thing, like him, to sleep in 
Jesus, and be at rest. And hence, by all that is precious in the death 
of the righteous, do I beseech you to accept that Saviour whose service 
is compatible with the highest types of human nobleness and the grand- 
est examples of human courage, whose grace can support you in the 
darkest hour of earthly sorrow, and whose strong rod and beautiful staff 
will sustain you in the dark valley, and bring you where you ' shall see 
the King in his beauty, and behold the land that is very far off.' 

"During the darkest days of the Revolution, Washington exclaimed 
on one occasion : ' Strip me of the dejected and suffering remnant of my 
army ; take from me all that I have left; leave me but a banner; give 
me but the means to plant it on the mountains of West Augusta, and I 
will yet draw around me the men who will lift up their bleeding country 
from the dust and set her free.' Beneath the shadow of these West Au- 
gusta mountains, from whose hardy sons the rich plains of Tennessee 
have been so largely populated, stands that college, endowed by the mu- 
nificence of Washington, and called by his name, over which Lee pre- 
sided until his death, and within whose chapel-walls his remains are now 
sleeping. Within the sound of its bell is the grave of Stonewall Jack- 



478 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, 

son. These grand old mountains, then, stand a fitting monument of this 
mighty triumvirate, a majestic mausoleum of three majestic men ; and, 
as long as their gray summits shall catch the early rays of morning, or 
hold lovingly the last lingering flush of the setting day, as long as the 
crystal streams that gush from their rocky sides shall flow onward to 
the sea, so long shall every wind that wakes the moanings of the moun- 
tain-pine, and every wave that stirs the echoes of the valley, continue 
to prolong the mighty dirge of a people's woe for these three bright, im- 
mortal names ' that were not born to die.' 

' They fell devoted, but undying. 
The very gales their names are sighing. 
The silent pillar, cold and gray, 
Claims kindred with their sacred clay ; 
Their spirits wrap the dusky mountain. 
Their memory sparkles o'er the fountain, 
The meanest rill, the mightiest river, 
Roll mingling with their fame forever.' " 

The following conclusion of a sermon, preached at the Second 
Baptist Church, Atlanta, Ga., by the pastor, Rev. Dr. W. T. 
Brantly, from the text " He is a good man," may be appropri- 
ately introduced here : 

" The discussion of the subject is closed ; but it finds such a beauti- 
ful illustration in the character of the beloved man whose decease, with- 
in the past few days, has filled millions of hearts with unaffected grief, 
that this discourse would be strikingly incomplete without some exhibi- 
tion of the fact. It is rare that a Christian minister can present one of 
earth's most illustrious sons as an example of a good man, in the sense in 
which the honorable attestation was borne to Barnabas. It happens 
but too rarely that the qualities which command the admiration of the 
world are found in unison with a devout life, but General Lee was 
as good as he was distinguished. He honored Christ, and was, in turn, 
honored by him. 

" My subject does not require me to speak of him as a soldier, though 
I may be permitted to say that, in my view, he will take rank among the 
most sagacious of commanders of any age or of any country. None knew 
this better, conceded it more readily, than did the brave men against 
whom he fought. I said, one day, to the oflScer who led the United 
States troops on the bloody field in Pennsylvania, where such a severe 
disaster befell the Confederate arms, ' Do you know, general, why you 
beat us at Gettysburg? It was because Stonewall Jackson was not 
there.' 'You are mistaken, sir,' was the reply; 'I have found many 



SELECTIONS FROM EULOGIES ON GENERAL LEE. 479 

Southerners who believed that Jackson was their great general, but it is 
not so.' ' Whom, then,' I inquired, ' did you look upon as the ablest offi- 
cer of our side ? ' ' General Lee,' was the reply — ' General Lee, sir, un- 
doubtedly. He is your greatest man.' And in harmony with this opin- 
ion has been the testimony, voluntarily tendered, of the highest military 
authorities of Europe, both in England and on the Continent. 

" The great soldier is not unfrequently the man of irrepressible am- 
bition, intent only on the aggrandizement of self. But, to military abili- 
ties of the highest order, Lee added a pure, self-sacrificing patriotism. 
He has been often censured for identifying his fortunes with the South ; 
but, with his convictions of duty, he could not have done otherwise. 
He was educated in the doctrine that the Federal Government was the 
creature of the States, and that allegiance was due it only through his 
native State. When, therefore, Virginia withdrew from the Union by 
a convention legally assembled, entertaining the ideas he did, he felt 
constrained to follow her fortunes. 

" He had strong temptations to take a different view of his political 
status. He was an officer in the United States Army, and held a position 
in public esteem second only to that of the aged commander-in-chief 
of the army. Had he arrayed himself against his State, the probability 
is, that the triumphs achieved by others would have been his victories, 
and the rewards of place would have been his conpensation. But, act- 
ing under the stern promptings of conscience, he turned from the most 
splendid prizes which ever allured the eye of man, and took his position 
with the feeble minority; counting it higher honor to hazard defeat and 
calamity with the weak than to triumph with the strong. He has 
been called a 'subjugated rebel;' but the candid and the intelligent 
who so pronounce, must concede that, in accordance with the political 
theory received from his fathers and held by himself, he was a patriot 
of the highest type. 

" But if he had been no more than a soldier and a patriot, I should 
not have presented him as an illustratiou of my theme. He was a 
Christian man; and his piety shed a hallowed lustre over qualities nat- 
urally shining, investing them with a higher beauty than secular re- 
nown can bestow. The evidence on which I rely for this fact is not that 
he was a professor of religion ; for, alas ! there is much profession in 
these days where it is to be feared that the power of godliness is want- 
ing. ' His doctrine and his life coincident gave lucid proof that he was 
honest in the sacred cause.' If you will refer to his public papers, writ- 
ten during the war, you will see that he never failed, whenever oppor- 
tunity offered, to call the attention of the people to the great Disposer 
of all human events, and to inspire them with gratitude or submission, 



480 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

as the circnmstcances might suggest. Even in a brief telegraphic dispatch, 
he rarely fails to make mention of the Sovereign Ruler of all. I know it 
may be said of public men, noted for irreligion and profanity, that they 
have often made pious allusions in their state papers ; but those who 
knew General Lee in private, could not fail to remark that religion waa 
with him something more than an empty name ; that it was a power 
lodged in the heart and controlling his whole nature. It was my privi- 
lege, during the past two years, to be thrown into his society, at differ- 
ent times, so intimately that I saw and conversed with him every day 
and frequently several times a day. I discovered that, with him, reli- 
gion was the theme on which he most delighted to dwell. He spoke to 
me with great interest of the efforts made by different denominations of 
Christian people to promote the spiritual good of the soldiers. He took 
pleasure in referring to the numbers who he hoped had been brought to 
the Saviour through the instrumentality of the chaplains and visiting 
ministers. Speaking to me, last June, of the college under his control, 
he referred more than once, evidently with the greatest satisfaction, to 
the number of students Avho had been hopefully converted during the 
term then just closed. He also mentioned with much interest the work 
of the Young Men's Christian Association among the students. When 
a guest at his house, the first thing with which he greeted me, on com- 
ing down in the morning, was the Bible, with a request that I should 
lead the devotions of the family ; and when, after reading God's word, 
we koelt down together, his prompt and cordial responses attested the 
earnestness with which he adopted the petitions ad-dressed to the Throne 
of Grace. 

" I have said that his piety pervaded his whole character. Three 
things particularly struck me as I observed him : 

"l. His conscientiousness. He was called to fill a position where 
the trustees asked for but his name, willing to relieve him of any duty 
save that which he chose to assume. But he chose to be very labori- 
ous. Breakfasting at an early hour, he devoted his whole time to the 
interest of the pupils; and when it is remembered that there were 
three hundred and fifty young men under his supervision, it is manifest 
that his energies must have been seriously taxed. So deep was the in- 
terest which he took in the personal welfare of the students, that each 
one of this large number was known to him by name, and he was con- 
stantly carrying on an extensive correspondence with the patrons of 
the college in regard to their sons and wards. 

"2. His humility was strikingly apparent. There was nothing in 
his demeanor to indicate that he considered liimself any thing more than 
an ordinary citizen. Some men of distinguished position never seem to 



SELECTIONS FROM EULOGIES ON GENERAL LEE. 481 

lose sight of the fact themselves, and to exhibit to others such a de- 
meanor that you would think they were anxious to remind their asso- 
ciates of their superiority ; but no one would have inferred, from any 
thing that was apparent in the bearing or conversation of General Lee, 
that he was in the company of a man who was admired and eulogized 
by millions. 

" If any man in the country had reason to be proud, it was he. De- 
scended from sires who filled conspicuous places in the early history of 
the republic, both in the cabinet and the field, graduating with the 
first honor from the highest military school in the country, the constant 
recipient of praise from multitudes, what a temptation to poor human 
nature to be puiFed up and vain! But, in the midst of all the honors 
that were heaped upon him, he seemed wholly unconscious to any su- 
perior claims upon the consideration of his friends; and you never 
heard from him the remotest allusion indicating a self-complacent or 
proud temper. 

" 3. More beautiful still was his charity. The grace, which both Paul 
and Peter mentioned as a crowning excellence, was an obvious fruit 
of his piety. It is hard for men, who have been disappointed and over- 
thrown, to suppress vindictive emotions toward the victors. Passion 
will occasionally rise to ebullition, and revengeful words will be spoken. 
But who ever heard a vindictive expression from Lee? I was with him 
in his own home, and conversed with him in all the freedom and famili- 
arity of d<jmestic intercourse, but I cannot recall a single word he ever 
uttered in denunciation of those against whom he fought for four years. 
The war closed, he seemed most desirous to heal the cruel breaches it 
had made. He refused to go to Gettysburg, last summer, as you re- 
member, to participate in a service which proposed to preserve me- 
morials of the war, declaring that all mementos of the unhappy strife 
should, as far as possible, be obliterated. A gentleman told me that, 
observing at the Springs, in Virginia, some persons from the North, who 
seemed to be wholly unacquainted with any of the guests, Generel Lee 
introduced himself to them, and then presented them to his friends. 
This little incident is an illustration of his charity. ' He that ruleth his 
spirit is mightier than he that taketh a city.' Some of the most illustri- 
ous conquerors of cities have been overthrown by their own passions. 
Tried by the divine test, he was a greater man than Caasar or Alexan- 
der. His was the glorious sublimity of self-conquest. He wears, I 
doubt not, to-day, the crown which glittered to the eye of that Christian 
soldier who said, ' I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, 
I have kept the faith, and now there is laid up for me a crown.' We 
mingle our tears over a common calamity, but the hand of Jesus has 
31 



482 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

wiped the last tear from his eye. He has gone where ' the wicked 
cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.' 

'* Young men ! I hold up before you the lamented Lee for your im- 
itation. Follow him as he followed Christ. You cannot acquire the 
military renown which he achieved. Few have the endowments which 
he possessed. None of you, probably, will ever see such an occasion of 
distinction as that which he knew. But you can imitate him in that 
which we now feel was his highest earthly glory, and which is the 
ground of his rejoicing in the skies. You can emulate his virtues, you 
can find, as did he, true greatness in true goodness. The crown which 
is bright for him, when all other laurels have faded, may, through a 
like faith, be that in which, living, you may exult, and, dying, you may 
glory," 

A gentleman of New York has given the author several in- 
cidents confirmatory of statements made in the body of the vol- 
ume which may be appropriately inserted here. During an in- 
timate acquaintance with General Scott, this- gentleman heard 
him speak frequently in the very highest terms of Colonel Robert 
E. Lee as a soldier and a Christian gentleman, but he remembers 
one occasion when in the course of a confidential interview he 
asked the direct, question : " General, whom do you regard as 
the greatest living soldier ? " Without hesitation, and with 
marked emphasis. General Scott replied : " Colonel Robert jE. 
Lee is not only the greatest soldier of America, but the greatest 
soldier now living in the world. This is my deliberate convic- 
tion, from a full knowledge of his extraordinary abilities, and, if 
the occasion ever arises, Lee will win this place in the estima- 
tion of the whole world." Tlie general then went into a detailed 
sketch of Lee's services, and a statement of his ability as an 
engineer, and his capacity not only to plan campaigns, but also 
to command large armies in the field, and concluded by saying : 
" I tell you, sir, that Robert E. Lee is the greatest soldier now 
living, and if he ever gets the opportunity he will prove himself 
the great captain of history.'''' 

About May 1, 1861, this same gentleman, accompanied by 
a Maryland Congressman, sought an interview with General 
Scott, for the purpose of getting a passport to Richmond to try 
and do something toward averting a resort to arms. In the 



SELECTIONS FROM EULOGIES ON GENERAL LEE. 483 

course of this interview General Scott again passed the highest 
eulogy upon General Lee as a soldier and a man ; stated the 
fact that the chief command of the United States Army had been 
tendered him just before he left Washington for Richmond ; said 
that he would have given way most cheerfully if they could 
have persuaded Lee to accept it, and expressed himself as deep- 
ly regretting the loss to the country sustained in Lee's resigna- 
tion. But, on the other hand, he felt confident that Lee would 
do every thing in his power to avert the war, and would, if it 
came to a conflict of arms, conduct it on the highest principles 
of Christian civilization. He cheerfully granted the gentlemen 
a permit to go to Richmond, and said : " Yes ! go and see Rob- 
ert Lee. Tell him, for me, that we must have no war, but that 
we must avert a conflict of arms until the ' sober second 
thought ' of the people can stop the mad schemes of the poli- 
ticians.'''' 

These gentlemen went to Richmond, and had a long inter- 
view with General Lee. He most cordially reciprocated the 
kindly feelings of General Scott, and expressed his ardent desire 
to avert war, and his willingness to do any thing in his power 
to bring about a settlement of the difficulties. 

But he expressed the fear that the passions of the people, 
North and South, had been too much aroused to yield to pacific 
measures, and that every efi"ort at a peaceful solution would 
prove futile. Alluding to Mr. Seward's boast that he Avould 
conquer the South in " ninety days," and to the confident asser- 
tions of some of the Southern politicians that the war would be 
a very short one, General Lee said, with a good deal of feeling : 
" They do not know what they say. If it comes to a conflict of 
arms, the war will last at least four years. Northern politicians 
do not appreciate the determination and pluck of the South, and 
Southern politicians do not appreciate the numbers, resources, 
and patient perseverance of the North. Both sides forget that 
we are all Americans, and that it must be a terrible struggle if 
it comes to war. Tell General Scott that we must do all we can 
to avert war, and if it comes to the worst, we must then do 
every thing in our power to mitigate its evils." 

The lamented Colonel John B. Baldwin, of Staunton, who 



484 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

was one of the leaders of the " Union party " in the Virginia 
Convention, but who (like General Early and others of his 
party), when the contest came, threw into the cause of his native 
State his great intellect and untiring zeal, related the following 
incident, which may be appropriately given here : While acting 
as Adjutant -General of Virginia, and in the discharge of his 
duty to muster into the service new recruits. Colonel Baldwin 
one day found in one of the companies twenty-five or thirty 
youths under the prescribed age. He told them that he could 
not receive them, under the regulations, and the brave boys 
were very much disappointed, and clamored to see General Lee. 
Coming into the presence of the general, they begged him to 
allow them to enlist, and promised that they would prove them- 
selves worthy to march by the side of their fathers and elder 
brothers. General Lee was very much afi'ected by their appeal, 
but told them that he could not receive them, that they must 
go home and take care of their mothers and sisters, and that he 
would send for them when they were needed. After the young 
men had left. General Lee said to Colonel Baldwin : " Those are 
beautiful boys, sir, and I very much disliked to refuse them ; but 
it will not do to allow boys to enlist now. I fear we shall need 
them all before this war closes." 



ADD RE S S 

ON THE CELEBRATION OF THE FIRST MEMORIAL ANNIVERSARY 
AT WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY, JANUARY 19, 1871, 

BY 

JAMES P. HOLOOMBE, LL. D., 

OF VIRGINIA. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 



The following Address is printed from the original manu- 
script of the author. When invited to furnish it for publication 
in the once projected Memorial Volume, Mr. Holcombe under- 
took to revise and expand it for the press, but death arrested 
him in the midst of this labor of love. Yet the Committee of 
Publication v^ere not willing to lose this beautiful tribute to 
General Lee, from one of the most accomplished orators of the 
South, and his family generously consented to place the unfin- 
ished manuscript at our disposal. It has been edited by careful 
axid affectionate hands ; yet it is only right to say that no printed 
oration can convey any idea of the fervor, the eloquence, and 
the charm of its delivery. The committee feel that the value 
of these memorials of Lee are enhanced by this touching me- 
morial of the gifted and eloquent Holcombe, whose untimely 
death is mourned by so many friends as a loss irreparable to the 
literature, the education, and the society of his native Virginia. 

THE COMMITTEE OF THE FACULTY OF 

•WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY. 



ADDEES S. 

Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the Faculty op 
Washington and Lee University : I approach the duty which 
lies before me with unaffected diffidence and emotion. The living 
form of Robert E. Lee no longer graces the seat of honor in your 
assembly ; but the inspiration of his spirit survives in this hall, 
which was the scene of his last labors, and the souls of a mourn- 
ing people encircle, as with au ocean of love, that tomb which 
contains all that is left of him. No eloquence could find voice 
for the feelings which spring up within our bosoms on this im- 
mortal day, and upon this consecrated spot : feelings of grief at 
his loss, of reverence for his character, pride in his glory, grati- 
tude for his services, thankfulness for his life, and devotion to 
his memory. Others will lay upon the altar of his fame those 
rich and abundant offerings which can alone satisfy the just 
measure of its requirements. Let my imperfect but willing 
service be supplied from the fullness of your recollections, and 
from the tenderness of your hearts. 

A great life has closed — a life upon which the longer we 
linger the more we shall find to love and revere, for it was one 
over which virtue will scarce breathe a sigh, and to which fame 
could hardly add a chaplet. It was a life which, in every season, 
relation, and employment, was crowned with all that wins the 
affection and commands the homage of mankind. It was a life 
in which the fallen hero of a lost cause became the centre of that 
admiring contemplation which is wont to follow the conqueror in 
his ovations.; and in which achievements of arms as brilliant as 
ever blazoned a warrior's crest, or adorned a nation's story, were 
so ennobled by the exhibition of nobility of soul with which 
they were associated, that we almost lose sight of the soldier 



488 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

in gazing on the image of tte grander man. It was a life 
which spanned the extremes of triumph and of calamity, but 
which was so transfigured by faith, hope, and charity, that its 
lines of suffering are even more lustrous than its lines of 
glory. If other lives have been sown more thickly with the glit- 
tering stars of human honor, or have rejoiced more abundantly 
in the gifts of earthly fortune, none have been more richly dow- 
ered with the love of man, or more divinely radiant with the be- 
atitudes of God : 

" There flowed from its mysterious urn a sacred stream, in whose calm 

depths the beautiful and pure 
Alone were mirrored ; which, though shapes of ill might hover round 

its surface, rolled in light, 
And took no shadow from them." 

Death, which withers the roses and flowers of kings, and lays 
in dust the pride and pomp of ambition, has no power over such 
a life but to touch it with lines of heaven, and seal it for immor- 
tality. On you, my countrymen, has descended, with a solemn 
emphasis of obligation, its sacred charge of fame. Accept this 
so gratefully, and guard it so piously, that the consolation, in- 
struction, and blessing of this life, may reach not only the gen- 
eration which it embraced, but all the generations which are to 
come. On our children and our children's children, on distant 
nations and remote ages, on that collective humanity which it 
has elevated and adorned, let the grand example shine. Let 
history inscribe it on unfading scrolls ; let poetry embalm it in 
imperishable songs ; let sculpture and painting pour round it 
their brightest inspiration ; let eloquence on its successive anni- 
versaries wake it, as with a trumpet of resurrection, to glory 
again ; and on the itndying echoes of tradition 

" Let it roU from soul to soul, 
And grow forever and forever I " 

The county of Westmoreland is hallowed ground, for it con- 
tains two spots which men will tread with reverence to the end 
of time. The one is the birthplace of George Washington, 
the other of Robert E. Lee. The latter was born on the 19th 
of January, 1807, before the generation associated with the 



HOLCOMBE'S ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 489 

former in the most important labors of his life had passed away. 
It was the happy fortune of young Lee to be nursed on the 
breast of gentle manners, and to breathe from infancy the pure 
air of honor, patriotism, and virtue. His mother was a daugh- 
ter of the family of Carter, long distinguished in the annals of 
our Virginia colony for the munificent application of large wealth 
to purposes of charity, learning, and religion. His father was a 
gentleman of ancient lineage, an illustrious patriot of the Revo- 
lution, an eminent soldier, and the historian of the struggle for 
independence in the South, the Governor of this Commonwealth, 
the life-long personal and political friend of Washington, and 
the orator selected by the Congress of the United States to pro- 
nounce his eulogy. Robert, when only eleven years old, was 
deprived, by the death of his father, of paternal counsel and sup- 
port. There is a single reference to him in the correspondence 
of the elder Lee, which, however trivial at the time, cannot be 
read now without melancholy pleasure. After some inquiries 
about other members of his family (for it was written while 
abroad), he adds : " Robert was alwaj's good, and in this happy 
turn of mind he will doubtless be confirmed by his ever-watch- 
ful and affectionate mother." And truly, through the diligent 
hand of that pious mother, did the Celestial Husbandman train 
the tender plant of his youthful nature, until it expanded into 
the full flower, and bore the golden fruitage of immortal virtue. 
At his mother's knee, that divinely-appointed school, whose in- 
struction no other teacher can impart, and whose lessons when 
faithfully given are worth all others we receive, he learned his 
obligations toward his Maker and his fellow-man. Through her 
vigilant and loving care, he formed those habits of industry, 
economy, simplicity, punctuality, and scrupulous performance of 
duty, which distinguished him through life. With what devo- 
tion he repaid her tender solicitude may be imagined from her 
own words, when he was about leaving her for West Point : 
" How," she exclaimed to a friend, in an uncontrollable burst of 
emotion, " can I ever live without him ? He, has been son, daugh- 
ter, protector — he has been all in all to me ! " The child was 
father to the man; and in him, if ever, was realized the aspira- 
tion of the poet — that his days might be 



490 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

" Bound each to eacli by natural piety." 

In 1825 he received an appointment to West Point as a cadet 
from Virginia. The expense of his education was no bounty 
from the Federal Government, but the payment of a debt to his 
native Commonvrealth, whose contributions to the Federal 
Treasury entitled her to place a certain number of her sons at 
this public institution, and which were more than sufficient to 
defray every disbursement on their behalf. The golden hours of 
opportunity were not consumed in vicious indulgence, nor wasted 
in debasing sloth. So diligently was his time improved, that in 
one of the largest classes which had ever left the academy he grad- 
uated the first in military and the second in general standing. 
And so faithfully were the most exacting requirements of dis- 
cipline observed that, during his term of four years, not a single 
demerit was attached to his name. Such was the presage of his 
future, as, crowned with the fairest laurels of youth, and arrayed 
in spotless robes, his Alma Mater presented him to his country. 
An early culture of the classics, prosecuted at least in the case 
of the Latin at intervals through life, had imparted to his mind 
a more liberal cast than can be communicated by the mathe- 
matical and scientific training of a purely military school ; his 
faculties had been disciplined and strengthened, furnished with 
useful knowledge, and fitted for the discharge of the highest 
duties of his profession ; his passions had been placed under the 
control of a purified reason, and his ambition consecrated to noble 
ends. Among the moral influences which were most operative 
in the formation of his character during this plastic period, three 
are conspicuous. The first was the social atmosphere in which 
he was born and raised. An old and settled society existed in 
Virginia, rich in the traditions of centuries, characterized by 
simplicity of manners, genial courtesy and hospitality, purity 
and refinement of domestic life, honor, dignity, manliness, and 
patriotism among public men, and a general and unaffected 
respect for religion, its officers and ministers. Robert E. Lee was 
early and deeply imbued with the tastes, sentiments, opinions, 
and habits of this society. "Washington was not more truly its 
type and representative during that colonial and revolutionary 



HOLCOMBE'S ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 491 

period in which it still bore the shining impress of the aristo- 
cratic institutions of England, than was Lee of its later age of 
republican simplicity. The second was his own veneration for 
the character of Washington. The attachment of the elder Lee 
to Washington was almost idolatrous, and this mingled love and 
reverence descended to his children. 

When Robert was very young, the family removed to 
Alexandria, and he became a frequent visitor at Arlington, where 
the memory of Washington was almost as much the genius of 
the place as at Mount Vernon. He grew up amid scenes which 
constantly recalled the Father of his Country, and in a social 
circle where the recollection of his virtues was yet fresh. It is 
not, therefore, surprising that this exalted character should 
have brooded as an ideal over the dreams and meditations of 
his youth. His modesty may have never permitted a statement 
which would have challenged such a comparison, but the impres- 
sion was produced upon his classmates and early companions 
that it was the model upon which he was seeking to fashion his 
own character. In the simple yet manly tastes and habits, in 
the dignity of carriage which forbade too familiar approach, in 
the unequaled modesty, in the command of temper, in the noble 
self-restraint, in the impartial justice, in the inflexible adherence 
to truth, in the uniform and scrupulous discharge of duty, in the 
chastened ambition of young Lee, they saw reflected, as in the 
mirror of youth, the severe and majestic image of Washington. 
The last of these influences was a deep and abiding reverence 
for religion. He did not become a member of the church tmtil 
after his return from Mexico ; but his regular attendance upon 
its services, and the singular rectitude of his conduct, leave no 
doubt that he was seeking amid those temptations of ambition 
and pleasure, which assailed his opening manhood, to make the 
divine canon his supreme law, and to mould his character in 
accordance with that comprehensive precept of apostolic wisdom : 
" Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, 
whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatso- 
ever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report : if 
there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things." 
In 1833 he was married to Miss Mary Custis, the daughter 



492 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

of George Wasliington Parke Custis, who was tlie grandson of 
Mrs. Washington, the adopted son of Washington, and the last 
survivor of the household of Mount Vernon. He was thus 
brought still more closely within that gracious and hallowed 
influence which already like a tutelary genius overshadowed his 
life. 

No event of historical significance marks his career until the 
commencement of the Mexican War. He had gradually risen to 
the rank of captain, discharging every duty that was assigned to 
him with a fidelity and distinction which were the earnest of 
larger fame. The Mexican War, like the Seven Years' War which 
preceded the Revolution, proved to be a training-school of great 
soldiers. Captain Lee was attached to the engineer corps of the 
central army, and took part in that wonderful campaign from 
Vera Cruz to the capital of Mexico. His rank furnishes no 
measure either of the services which he rendered or of the con- 
fidence which was reposed in him. He was the favorite staflf- 
officer of General Scott, and the latter has been heard to say, on 
more than one occasion, that his success was owing in a great 
degree to the skill, valor, and undaunted energy of Robert E. Lee. 
His ability as an engineer led to the speedy reduction of Vera 
Cruz ; a daring reconnoissance which he made for more than a 
mile in the rear of the enemy's lines contributed largely to the 
victory of Cerro Gordo ; his gallantry at Contreras in crossing 
at night, alone, and througli the Mexican skirmishers, a lava- 
field almost impassable at any time, and doubly dangerous from 
recent floods, opened communication between the main body of 
the American army and an isolated command under General 
Smith, and thus secured the decisive triumph which followed on 
the morrow ; and in the final struggle around the heights of 
Chapultepec, where he was severely wounded, his courage and 
endurance elicited the thanks of the commander-in-chief, and 
were rewarded by a third brevet of honor. Well might Scott 
refer to him as "Captain Lee, so constantly distinguished as 
well for daring as for felicitous conception and execution." It 
is no injustice to any of the brave men with whom he was 
associated to affirm that not one returned home around whose 
name had gathered such a halo of promise, while he was re- 



nOLCOMBE'S ANxVIYERSARY ADDRESS. 493 

garded in popular judgment as the noblest representative of 
our country's chivalry. 

" From spur to plume, a star of tournament," the prescient 
eye of the commander-in-chief had discerned, and his generous 
tongue proclaimed, that " Lee was the greatest living soldier of 
America." 

Shortly after the close of the war, Colonel Lee took upon 
himself the vow to fight manfully as Christ's soldier, a vow 
which was never forgotten nor disregarded until in the silence 
of a dying-chamber his upward-pointing finger revealed the 
soul's hope and expectation of reward. Prosperous fortune had 
showered on him the choicest of earthly blessings, a loving fam- 
ily, troops of friends, large wealth, spotless fame, and a con- 
science void of offense toward God and man. But the horizon 
of his country was already darkening with the dread shadows 
of civil war. Opposing theories of constitutional construction 
and obligation, as well as of public policy, developed at the for- 
mation of the Constitution, after consuming more than half a 
century in fierce struggles for ascendency, were now being im- 
pelled on mighty tides of angry passion toward a bloody arbit- 
rament. At the commencement of that awful drama in which 
he was to perform so great a part. Colonel Lee was with his 
regiment upon the Texan frontier. About the last of February, 
1861, he was summoned to Washington to sit on a board of 
officers convened to revise the regulations of the army. The 
signs of public excitement which he observed on his route to the 
capital, filled him with the liveliest fear of a hostile collision 
between the Confederate States and the United States. These 
apprehensions were expressed to General Scott at their first 
interview, coupled with the remark that in such an event his 
own position would become one of great delicacy. He was as- 
sured in reply that the Government had no fears of such a result. 
After this conversation, his time was spent almost entirely with 
his family at Arlington. He had no further communication with 
General Scott, or any officer in the confidence of the President, 
as to his purposes and plans, until the commencement of hostili- 
ties, when he was informally tendered the command of the army 
of the United States in the field. 



494 KEMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

Virginia, although deeply moved by sympathy with her 
sister States of the South and by common wrongs, had clung to 
the Union in loyal hope, until the alternative was presented to 
her of taking part in the unnatural and unconstitutional war on 
communities sprung from her loins, or of receiving the first and 
deadliest shock of embattled legions upon her own unshielded 
bosom. In this hour of supreme peril she was faithful to prin- 
ciple and to honor. With a solemnity imposed by the full 
knowledge of her extreme danger, with a sorrow befitting the 
severance of so many bonds of friendship and of fame, but with 
the dignity of conscious rectitude, and with the fearless, grand 
resolve of freedom, she repealed the ordinance which had made 
her a member of the Federal Union, resumed her ancient inde- 
pendence, and summoning her children, wherever scattered, to 
her side, threw herself, with the shout of a king, along the path 
of invasion. 

The voice of Virginia in distress did not fall unheeded upon 
the ear of Robert E. Lee. It pierced his bosom with the keenest 
anguish, for he loved the Union with a generous and passionate 
devotion. Had it been possible to close its yawning chasm by 
the sacrifice of his own life, no Roman Curtius could have leaped 
more freely into the gulf of death. But the Union around which 
were centred his afi'ections and his obligations was not a con- 
solidated Union, in which great communities, like his own 
mother Commonwealth, were sunk to the level of petty counties, 
but a Federal Union between sovereign and equal States. The 
Union which he had sworn to serve had been dissolved by the 
power which brought it into existence ; and its dissevered and 
exasperated sections were now gathering up their every energy 
for a deadly struggle. Bloody hands had rent in twain their 
fellowship of glory and communion of patriotism ; and the Gov- 
ernment which yet claimed the name and flag of the Union was 
preparing to replace its ancient bonds of liberty and love — 
bonds woven by celestial fingers, and consecrated by the holiest 
and tenderest recollections — with iron links of conquest forged 
in a fiery furnace of war. Could any selfish or ignoble consider- 
ations have controlled Colonel Lee, he would have remained in 
the Federal army. He was opposed to the policy of secession. 



HOLCOMBE'S ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 495 

He had been tlirough life a friend of emancipation. " If I owned 
four million slaves," he had declared, " I would give them all 
for the Union." His calm, prophetic judgment discerned that 
vast disparity in resources, preparation, and all the elements of 
national military strength, which imparted to the struggle from 
its commencement the character of a forlorn hope. His own 
large property lay along the border, to become the first spoils 
of Federal victory. The command of the army of the United 
States, with the glittering perspective of that great prize which 
lies so close to the topmost round in the ladder of an American 
soldier's fame, was held up to his ambition. Colonel Lee's char- 
acter did not permit him to seek refuge from the perils and 
duties of the hour by occupying a position of selfish neutrality. 
The great Italian poet has placed those who, during the civil 
wars of Florence, sought escape from the dangers and responsi- 
bilities of citizenship by avoiding the discharge of its highest 
duty, in the vestibule of his Inferno, as men who, having never 
truly lived, were disdained alike by Justice and by Mercy, and 
unworthy of even a passing glance from mortal eye. This doom 
of scornful oblivion, pronounced in undying verse, has been con- 
firmed by the accordant sentiment of all succeeding ages. The 
only question which Colonel Lee considered was that of com- 
parative obligation ; and this he weighed in heavenlj' balances, 
and before the judgment-seat of conscience. With a grief at 
parting from so many cherished friends and associations, which 
in a nature so noble no time could heal, but with a conviction 
of right so clear that the decision never cost an after-pang of 
regret, and a resolution so firm that the world could not have 
shaken it, he embraced the cause of his native Commonwealth. 
"Our primal duties shine aloft like stars." There are universal 
and irresistible instincts, sympathies, and principles, that bind 
us to the land which is at once our birthplace and our home. As 
we grow in years, its image becomes blended with all the hopes 
and fears, the loves and friendships, the joys and sorrows of life. 
The heart fastens round it an allegiance which no strain of time 
or of fate can part, but death alone unloose ; and if conscience 
had no vindictive sting, nor history any voice of enduring re- 
proach, with which to punish an apostate son, we might almost 



496 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

expect the mute, insensate forms of Nature to burst into speech, 
and rebuke the degeneracy which in danger or misfortune could 
forsake or betray it. 

I shall not pause in the house of his friends to justify this 
action on the part of Colonel Lee. It is pleasing to know, from 
one who was present when General Scott received the manly 
and pathetic letter which accompanied his resignation, that this 
great soldier, while expressing deep regret at the decision, gave 
emphatic utterance to his own conviction that it had been made 
under an imperative sense of duty. The opinions of Colonel 
Lee were those which had been entertained by the great body 
of the people of Virginia ever since the adoption of the Consti- 
tution. His own father, who was a member of the convention 
which ratified it, and of the party which placed on its powers 
the most liberal construction, had often avowed them. Doc- 
trines far more extreme had been proclaimed by Jefferson and 
by Madison, yet the suffrages of the nation had afterward raised 
these great patriots to the highest offices within its gift. A 
New-England President, Mr. John Quincy Adams, in referring 
to their opinions, had used this language before the House of 
Representatives : " Holding the converse with a conviction as 
firm as an article of religious faith, I see too clearly to admit of 
denial that minds of the highest order of intellect, and hearts 
of the purest integrity of purpose, have been brought to differ- 
ent conclusions." 

No great question of politics or of ethics has ever agitated 
mankind, upon which wise and good men have not been almost 
equally divided. In ages of bigotry and ignorance, the trium- 
phant party punished its adversaries with confiscation, torture, 
the dungeon, the axe, or the stake. A larger toleration of dif- 
ferences of opinion has been the surest index of advancing civ- 
ilization ; and the time must come when all will recognize the 
great truth that the moral character of individuals cannot be 
measured by the standards of a creed which they disown ; that 
the highest virtue is confined to no sect or party ; and that men 
who, under a common impulse of duty, have been led by honest 
yet conflicting judgments to range themselves under hostile 
banners, may still be united by the higher and immortal bond 



HOLCOMBE'S ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 497 

of eqvial fidelity to principle. Hampden and Falkland, although 
the one poured out his blood for the Commonwealth, and the 
other for the king, are alike enshrined at this day in the love 
and reverence of England. The sentiment that " treason should 
be made odious," wise and just in its proper place, has no ap- 
plication, in morals or public law, to a civil strife between two 
great sections of a people, springing from ancient differences 
of opinion as to their constitutional relations. Ideas cannot be 
slain by the sword ; and a frank and loyal acceptance of all the 
requirements of the situation has wrought no shadow of change 
in our convictions of truth and right. The language of Lee 
himself, about two years before his death, expresses the uni- 
versal sentiment of the Southern people. " I did nothing more," 
he observed to General Hampton, " than my duty required of 
me ; I could have taken no other course without dishonor ; and, 
if all were to be done over again, I should act in precisely the 
same manner." The " married calm " of the state can never be 
restored without a fuller measure on all sides of that large- 
hearted charity which is able to recognize and revere the 
strength and purity of an adversary's principles. And every 
attempt to dishonor us by attaching to our representative he- 
roes the degradation of crime, will only serve, by prolonging the 
worst oppressions of conquest, to perpetuate its deepest resent- 
ments. I know not how long men may be found who shall re- 
fuse reverence to the great character of Robert E. Lee, in conse- 
quence of his participation in our struggle for independence — a 
struggle in which, if we erred, we were misled b}'^ splendid illu- 
sions of liberty and virtue. But I do know that no calumny can 
darken his fame, for History has lighted up his image with her 
everlasting lamp ; that no malice can profane his tomb, for the 
whole earth has become his sepulchre ; and that no power can 
hush that funeral-march which followed him to the grave, and 
yet fills the world with the music of sorrow, for it is beaten 
by the loving pulses of the stricken hearts of his countrymen. 

Colonel Lee became, by the acceptance of his resignation, a 

private citizen of Virginia. The command of her military and 

naval forces was at once tendered to him, a position which he 

did not feel at liberty to decline. He was received by her con- 

32 



498 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

vention, then in session, with imposing ceremony. The person 
and bearing of General Lee would have riveted the gaze of any 
circle : a form combining, in admirable proportion, strength with 
grace ; a grave and lofty carriage ; an air of mingled modesty 
and command ; regular but expresssive features ; hair whose 
dark locks were just silvered by the first frosts of life's maturest 
season ; a brow on which dignity and honor sat enthroned ; an 

eye— 

" The limpid mirror of a stately soul, 
Sweet to encourage, steadfast to control, 
From which subjected hosts might draw. 
As from a double fountain, love and awe." 

The president of the convention, Mr. Janney, a patriot of the old 
Roman stamp, in whom were fitly represented the mature wis- 
dom and deliberate virtue of the Commonwealth, welcomed him 
to a hall where could almost still be heard the echoes of the 
voices of the statesmen and soldiers of by-gone days who had 
borne his name, and whose blood was now flowing in his veins. 
After some eloquent words of patriotic reminiscence, and of ap- 
propriate reference to the achievements which had pointed to 
hita as the fit depositary of this great trust, Mr. Janney closed 
by saying that his mother, Virginia, had placed her sword in 
his hands on condition that it should be drawn only in her de- 
fense, and with the expectation that he would rather fall with it 
than see the object fail for which it was unsheathed. General 
Lee replied in a manner marked by the deepest solemnity : 
" Trusting in Almightj'^ God, an approving conscience, and the 
aid of my fellow-citizens, I devote myself to the service of my 
native State." How faithfully and how gloriously that pledge 
was redeemed let the great sentence of history, the applause 
with which the world rang, and the tears and benedictions of 
his countr3^men, this day proclaim ! 

His services during the first year of the war were compara- 
tively obscure and undistinguished — the organization of the Vir- 
ginia troops, the direction of the coast-defenses in South Caro- 
lina and Georgia, and a campaign in Western Virginia, which, 
although it arrested the advance of General Rosecrans, was in- 
decisive, and not commensurate with public expectation. But 



HOLCOMBE'S ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 499 

the period was marked by many incidents which revealed to 
those with whom he was brought in intimate contact the ex- 
alted patriotism and noble magnanimity of his character. No 
opportunity was afforded for the display of his great military 
genius until the beginning of June, 186)^, when General John- 
ston, his illustrious predecessor in the command of the Army of 
Northern Virginia, was disabled by a wound, and Lee was 
assigned to the vacant position. The limits of this discourse 
do not allow any detailed narrative of the subsequent history 
of that army; but a record of more heroic valor, directed by 
more consummate skill to the defense of a people's liberties, can- 
not be found in the annals of war. A trivial accident on the 
day of battle may sometimes defeat the wisest combinations of 
genius, and bestow the favors of fortune where they are least 
merited. But where a series of general engagements, all san- 
guinary and extending over different campaigns, take place 
between opposing armies drawn from the same martial race, one 
army being always superior to the other in numbers, arms, 
equipment, and artillery, and commanded by a succession of 
distinguished soldiers, and the inferior force, under a single 
leader, in every great conflict either inflicts ignominious defeat 
on its adversary, or repels attack with prodigious loss, or, where 
some strong position has fought against it, delivers so stunning 
a blow that its subsequent gage of battle is not accepted, the 
conclusion is inevitable that the transcendent ability of the com- 
mander, or the inspiration of a higher principle with the soldiery, 
or both, must have redressed the unequal balance of the war, 
and turned the scales of victory. And such, without any refer- 
ence to its previous brilliant achievements under Beauregard 
and Johnston, was the history of the Army of Northern Virginia 
under General Lee, from June, 1862, to the commencement of 
the winter of 1864 and 1865, when it was no longer that army, 
except in name. In June, 1862, after a struggle of seven days, it 
forced the Army of the Potomac, under McClellan, then almost 
in sight of the spires of Richmond, cowering back to the shelter 
of their gunboats at Harrison's Landing. In August, after three 
days of severe fighting, it hurled the Federal troops under Pope 
in rout and panic into the fortifications around Washington. 



500 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

Having crossed the Potomac in the grand but delusive hope of 
lifting up down-trodden Maryland, it met McClellan, in Septem- 
ber, at Sharpsburg, possessed by accident of the inappreciable 
advantage of a knowledge of its own movements and position, and 
with a superiority of numbers greater than either Frederick the 
Great or Napoleon, in any extremity of their fortune, ever encoun- 
tered, and maintaining intact, at every point, the integrity of its 
lines, it repelled his fearful and repeated attacks with immense 
slaughter. In December, at Fredericksburg, the mighty hosts 
of Burnside recoiled, shattered and demoralized, from its blows. 
In the following May, at Chancellorsville, it so chastised the 
insolence of Hooker, that he was compelled to seek safety for 
his beaten army by precipitate retreat, in the darkness of a 
stormy night, across the protecting stream of the Rappahan- 
nock. In June, advancing into Pennsylvania, it was attended by 
its usual current of success, until, assailing the almost impreg- 
nable heights of Cemetery Hill at Gettysburg, its inadequate 
force sviifered a bloody repulse ; but standing defiantly at ba}', it 
challenged a renewal of the combat again and again, which its 
enemy was afraid to deliver. Jn the next spring, when Grant 
was called from the West " to fight the Army of the Potomac to 
its utmost capacity, and close the war as with a peal of thun- 
der," its worsted but high-hearted columns received the masses 
of fresh troops which were hurled on them in succession from 
the Wilderness to Cold Harbor with such bloody welcome that, 
when an order was given, at the latter place, for a general ad- 
vance along the entire front, not a soldier moved, and the W'hole 
immobile line presented silent but emphatic protest against 
further carnage. 

" It will be difficult," General Lee wrote, while collecting 
materials for the history of these campaigns, "to make the world 
believe the odds against which we fought." The great victo- 
ries of Marlborough were won with numbers in general about 
equal to those of his adversaries. In only one of Wellington's 
glorious Peninsular battles was the disparity between the 
French and English as much as two to one. At Leuthen, the 
relative inferiority of the Prussians more nearly approached that 
of the Confederates (and that has been regarded as the very 



HOLCOMBE'S ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 501 

masterpiece of military art) — the great Frederick executed one 
of those brilliant movements which the nature of the country 
never permitted in Virginia, and by which, with thirty thousand 
men, he defeated an army of eighty thousand before the latter 
could change the formation of its line of battle. The Federal 
superiority at Sharpsburg was as three to one ; at Chancellors- 
ville and Fredericksburg it was nearly the same ; at Gettysburg 
it was more than three to two ; in the campaign of the Wilder- 
ness it began with three to one; and, but for the slaughter 
which deprived General Grant of a third of his command, his 
reenforcements would have increased it to four to one. Under 
the cloud of misrepresentations which enveloped our character 
and institutions before the war, the world had begun to believe 
that the people of the South were degenerate from the strain 
of their great fathers, and that we needed 

" The influence of a Northern star 
To string our nerves, and steel our hearts to war." 

Never was the manhood of a people more gloriously vindi- 
cated, nor the strength which lies in the love of liberty more 
grandly displayed, than in this campaign between Lee and 
Grant. Not in one battle, but in a series of desperate engage- 
ments from the 5th of May to the 10th of June, and along a line 
of seventy miles in extent, did the two armies wrestle for vic- 
tory in deadly strife ; Lee having forty thousand men on the 
first day, increased subsequently by eleven thousand, and Grant 
one hundred and thirty thousand on the first day, with reeen- 
forcements to the amount of sixty thousand. Lee assumed the 
offensive whenever his adversary appeared in the open field. 
Each availed himself as far as possible of the cover which was 
furnished by the nature of the ground, and improvised breast- 
works ; and yet, with these tremendous odds against him, Lee 
disabled a larger number of his enemy's force than his own en- 
tire strength, and compelled an abandonment of the line which 
he had selected for his advance upon Richmond, and almost de- 
stroyed the morale, not only of his great army, but of the great 
people whose cause it represented. " So gloomy was the mili- 
tary outlook," writes the Federal historian, Mr. Svvinton, " and 



502 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

to such a degree, by consequence, had the moral sprhig of the 
public mind become relaxed, that there was at this time great 
danger of a collapse of the war. The history of this conflict, 
truthfully written, will show this. Had not success elsewhere 
come to brighten the horizon, it would have been difficult to 
have raised new forces to recruit the Army of the Potomac, 
which, shaken in its structure, its valor quenched in blood, and 
thousands of its ablest officers killed and wounded, was the 
Army of the Potomac no more." 

There is no campaign in history which more completely es- 
tablishes the prowess of an army or the skill of its leader. That 
of Napoleon, when the allies invaded France, is one of the two 
on which his military fame will always securely rest. But the 
allies, with a superiority of numbers scarcely greater than that 
of Grant over Lee, and with no such advantages of transporta- 
tion and military material of every form as the Federal army 
possessed, were able, in the course of the two months of Febru- 
ary and March, to enter Paris in triumph. The close of the two 
months of May and June found Grant sitting down to the siege 
of Petersburg without an achievement which could add to his 
own fame, or reflect lustre upon the mighty host of brave men 
whose blood had been so freely poured out in obedience to his 
orders. 

The strength of the Army of Northern Virginia was never 
broken in battle. No crowning victory like that of Leipsic or 
Waterloo gilds the banners of its adversary. It did not achieve 
the independence of its country, but it fought with a fierce, 
avenging courage which has made the soil of Virginia from the 
mountains to the sea one vast monument — 

" Where Death and Glory an eternal Sabbath keep." 

It was not until wasted by that " process of attrition " through 
which overwhelming numbers and resources have in all ages at 
length subdued the free and brave ; not until thinned and enfee- 
bled by disease, privation, and famine ; not until broken in heart 
by the accumulation of disasters in other quarters, for which it 
was not responsible, but which left it no reck of help or hope, 
that its long line of glory was closed ; and then without a mem- 



HOLCOMBE'S ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 503 

ory to awaken in its own bosom a sense of shame, or give to the 
tongue of its foe a boast of pride. 

General Lee was the idol of his army. The sagacity, as un- 
erring as an instinct, with which he divined the purposes of the 
enemy, and the fertility of resource with which he formed com- 
binations to foil them, the cheerfulness with which he shared 
their privations, and the solicitude he ever manifested for the 
supply of their wants, inspired a confidence which no misfortune 
was ever able to shake, and a devotion which has never grown 
cold but in the grave. I have neither ability nor inclination to 
offer any criticism upon his military character. It is an axiom 
among the great masters of military science that no man has 
ever made war without committing mistakes. The failures of 
Lee, wherever they occurred, may be traced, not to any defect 
in his own plans, but to the inefficiency of subordinates, the 
want of resources, or to obstacles which no power at his disposal 
could have removed. It is not an uncommon opinion to attribute 
to him the extreme caution which fits for defensive rather than 
the bold and enterprising genius that delights in offensive war. 
But a study of his campaigns, from his first movement against 
McClellan to the last which preceded the evacuation of Peters- 
burg, will disclose a strategist as daring as ever rode in the whirl- 
wind or directed the storm of battle. It was this audacity of 
temper, joined to a confidence without limit in his troops, which 
led to the single disaster of his military life, that of Gettysburg ; 
and, even there, had the storming column been properly sus- 
tained, the supreme hardihood of the enterprise would have been 
crowned with success. 

Not the " Six Hundred," my countrymen, better deserve the 
meed of immortal renown than those brave heroes of Gettys- 
burg ; nor, in proportion to their respective numbers, did Death 
reap at Balaklava a ghastlier harvest than on Cemetery Hill. 
The Six Hundred rode, at swift cavalry-gallop, for twelve hun- 
dred yards, into the Russian batteries, with cannon to right and 
to left and in front of them, and sabred the men at their guns. 
This division of Confederate infantry marched for nearly a mile 
across an open field, exposed to the most destructive fire of mus- 
ketry and artillery, not with the quick step of an efferv^escing 



504 REMINISCEXCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

enthusiasm, but with the measured tramp of disciplined courage ; 
steadily, through a plunging storm of the missiles of destruc- 
tion, they climbed the hill ; they cleared the rifle-pits, and, leap- 
ing on the breastworks, planted with exultant shouts their glo- 
rious battle-flags ; for some minutes, " like eagles with bloody 
plume," they stood triumphant on the crest of battle ; but, alas ! 
the covering and supporting columns were not equal to this he- 
roic devotion, and the only fruit of their valor was a memory to 
their country which, through all the ages of time, will never 
grow dim. 

Not military strategy, but the necessities of the political sit- 
uation, kept General Lee and his army in the trenches around 
Petersburg. The proper authorities had been informed that he 
could not, with thirty-one thousand men, his whole strength, 
hold lines of thirty miles in extent ; and that, without reenforce- 
ment, he would soon be unable to move from them. They had 
been unable to furnish this aid, or even the provisions which 
were necessary to keep the men in a physical condition to per- 
form their duty. The sense of humanity, rising superior even to 
the love of liberty, had induced them to divide the wholly insuf- 
ficient rations of our own army with the Federal prisoners whom 
they. had proposed in vain to restore without equivalent, but 
who had been left by their own Government, when we were 
known to be in a condition bordering on famine, to share the 
horrors of our situation. After a long and skillful concealment 
of this extreme weakness, the fatal blow was struck, and evacu- 
ation became unavoidable. When General Lee reached Amelia 
Court-House, and found that the supplies which he had ordered 
to be collected at that point, the last gift of their country to his 
perishing troops, had been sent, through some oflficial blunder, to 
Richmond, the necessary dispersion in search of food left scarcely 
a ray of hope that his worn and straggling columns could be con- 
centrated again for effective service. Thousands of brave men 
dropped on the road through sheer exhaustion from want of rest 
and food; thousands more were cut off in detachments too small 
to present a front to the foe, until only eight thousand, com- 
pletely enveloped in the toils of the hunter, remained to hold up 
the flag of their countrj?- at Appomattox. To those eight thou- 



HOLCOMBE'S ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 505 

sand, who, without hope, but without fear, proved faithful to the 
hist, as ready in the agony of despair as under the exhilaration 
of triumph to die for liberty, that country, in her heart of hearts, 
will ever render unspeakable homage. Let us not deceive our- 
selves ; let not our tender memories glide into deceitful hopes ; 
let us bow without question or murmur to that inscrutable 
Providence which fills the ages with its mighty work of recon- 
struction, and is ever evolving, from the wrecks of old societies, 
the fairer forms of new ; and let us labor frankly and loyally for 
the stability, liberty, and glory of the Government which, after 
this great appeal of arms, we have accepted. But let us never 
fail to vindicate our fidelity to the Constitution which our fathers 
framed, or, spurning the heathen sentiment that a cause is con- 
secrated by success, to defend the fame of the brave men who 
upheld the principles of that Constitution with such unfaltering 
constancy. We do not mourn as those who weep by dishonored 
graves ; for the faith, courage, and devotion to liberty, of our 
Confederate dead have, like the beauty of Juliet, made the tomb 

itself 

" A feasting presence, bright with light." 

Their example is more precious to us by far than all the ma- 
terial wealth we have sacrificed in the struggle. The great race 
to which we belong has often kindled its hope and courage from 
fields of disaster, where the brave have fallen in defense of their 
princii^les with no stain upon their names. The fatal day at 
Roncesvalles furnished to European chivalry its noblest battle- 
song. The great fight at Hastings was begun by a Norman 
minstrel, who 

" Chanted, lustily and loud, the strain 
Of Roland and of Charlemagne ; 
And the dead who deatliless all 
Fell at famous Roncesvalles ! " 

In many lands, O Freedom ! lie thy everlasting springs. 
But upon no spot of earth — not on the plains of Marathon nor 
in the unconquered Gulf of Salamis, not at Bannockburn or 
Morgarten, not at Bunker Hill or at Yorktown — hast thou un- 
sealed fountains of inspiration purer or more unfailing than upon 



506 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

those heights of Gettysburg, where sleep our yet unsepulchred 
dead, and tliose fields of Appomattox, where gathered round 
Lee the unterrified remnant of our living braves. Such lives 
were too precious to be thrown away in unavailing sacrifice, 
and but one melancholy duty remained to their leader. With 
what agony that duty shook his soul, may be inferred from the 
exclamation which even his stern self-control could not suppress : 
" I would rather die a thousand deaths ! " Indeed, the tempta- 
tion seems most powerfully to have assailed his heroic spirit to 
ride along the lines to find a soldier's grave. " But, then," as 
he said to Gordon, " what will become of the women and chil- 
dren of the South ? It is our duty to live." Yes, by a sacrifice 
nobler than death, live ! — live, to pour into the bosoms of your 
countrymen a reviving tide of hope ; live, to exhibit to the 
world the glory of magnanimous suffering ; live, to illustrate, 
by sublime example, your own immortal sentiment, that " human 
virtue should be equal to human calamity." Over the mournful 
incidents of that closing scene, incidents which our people will 
never read except through dimming tears, I drop the veil. But 
none could have been brought in contact with him in that dark 
hour of the soul's crucifixion, and have beheld the majesty with 
which his spirit rose triumphant above the weakness of the flesh, 
the steadiness with which his gaze was bent through all the 
spectral gloom which enveloped the path of duty, and the fixed 
purpose which he manifested to follow it 

" Through the long gorge to the far light," 

without feeling the truth of the almost inspired lines of the poet, 

that 

Virtue could see to do what Virtue would, 

By her own radiant light, tliough sun and moon 

"Were in the flat sea sunk." 

Whither now, O world-renowned hero ! will you direct your 
footsteps ? Will you carry to foreign courts that sword which 
in any service can command dignity and affluence ? Will you 
seek in the excitement of a fresh career amid new scenes to for- 
get the sorrows of the past, and to fill other lands with the fame 
of illustrious deeds ? 



HOLCOMBE'S ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 507 

No ; you have never lived for pleasure, for ambition, or for 
self; jou have no thought nor feeling which is not turned to 
your country. Come what may, be it poverty and reproach, be 
it confiscation and disfranchisement, be it the dungeon or the 
gibbet, to the edge of doom you will share the fortunes of your 
people ! The benignant skies which bent above your boyhood 
shall arch your grave ; and, if no other record attests your vir- 
tues, your enemies themselves must inscribe upon your tomb 
the Christian patriot's most fitting epitaph : 

" True to the kindred points of heaven and home." 

General Lee, after mature deliberation as to his future 
course, accepted the presidency of Washington College. He 
could have obtained a more lucrative position, but none so con- 
genial to his taste, or in which he thought he could render more 
service to his country. And in what sphere could the highest 
wisdom and virtue be more worthily employed ? He applied 
himself with characteristic energy to the mastery and discharge 
of his new duties. It was not long before every teacher and 
every pupil felt the quickening influence of his presence. The 
discipline of the college was invigorated, and made that of a 
Christian famil}' ; its schools were increased, its course of studies 
enlarged ; its facilities for instruction multiplied ; new and ad- 
mirable provisions introduced in its organization, designed to 
avoid alike the mischiefs of the close curriculum and the abuses 
incident to a purely elective system ; and a spirit of energy, 
fidelity, and liberal ambition, infused into its whole administra- 
tion. Suns seem' larger at their setting, and no chapter in 
General Lee's life has appeared to me grander than its close. 
Cheerfully, patiently, laboriously, with no regret at being with- 
drawn from the world's eye, with no ambition foreign to his work, 
but wdth a devotion as single as if on this alone he was to build 
his fame, did he dedicate himself to the youth of his country. Most 
fortunate they who heard the lessons of honor, patriotism, and 
piety, from his lips ! May the precepts be as fruitful as the 
example is immortal ! And may the College of Washington, 
now doubly hallowed as the University of Lee, never fail the 
patriotic hope and expectation which gave it birth, and now 



508 REMINISCENCES OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 

have raised it to the skies, but ever remain a generous nursery 
of learning and virtue, and an increasing benefaction to the 
world through the years to come! But our indebtedness to 
General Lee for his services since the war is not to be measured 
by the extent of his influence as the President of Washington 
College. The cheerfulness with which he endured the priva- 
tions, and the silent dignity with which he submitted to the 
mortifications of adverse fortune, the resolution with which he laid 
aside the depressing memories of the past, and the energy with 
which he applied himself to the duties of the present hour, were 
of inappreciable value in reviving the almost extinguished spirit 
of the covmtry. The rapidity with which France recovered from 
the desolating civil wars of the sixteenth century was ascribed, 
by Burke, to the fact that a noble pride and a generous ambi- 
tion still survived in the people. In the fellowship and com- 
munion of Lee's great example we have learned to feel that 
misfortune involves no loss of self-respect, that men cannot be 
dishonored unless they dishonor themselves, that no conqueror 
can impose fetters upon the soul, and that, cherishing every 
lofty aspiration, practising every manly faculty, and grasping 
every opening opportunity, we should shield ourselves with 
hope, bear nobly whatever Providence may ordain, and drink 
strength from the cup of calamity itself. The poet, moralizing 
upon the fall of other republics, and the brevity of the period in 
which a state may be destroyed as compared with that in which 
it can be formed, asks the question, as if it admitted of no reply, 

" Can man its shattered splendor renovate, 
Eecall its glories back, and vanquish time and fate ? " 

Prussia after Jena, France after the triumphant invasion of 
1813, and Sardinia after the Revolution of 1848, have shown us 
that nations may find in the very depths of their fall the ele- 
ments of their recovery. It is more through the influence of 
General Lee than of any other human agency that we expect to 
furnish another example of a community rising the stronger 
from those storms of fate which laid it prostrate for a time. In 
that dawn of hope which breaks around us, we hail the approach- 
ing day. This old Commonwealth, which, after filling the hori- 



HOLCOMBE'S AXNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 509 

zon of history so long with its meshes of golden light, had sunk 
into the womb of darkness, shall 

"... anon repair its drooping head 
And trick its beams, and with new-spangled ore 
Flame in the forehead of the morning sky." 

But a mighty sorrow was wearing away the springs of life. 
Grief over the lost cause, sympathy with the sufferings of his 
old soldiers and their families, solicitude for the future of our 
people, were fast breaking down a constitution which Nature 
and temperate habits had destined for robust old age. Kossuth, 
on visiting the tomb of Washington, is said to have burst into 
tears. " He saved his country," exclaimed the Hungarian patriot ; 
" I could not save mine ! " A similar anguish brought Lee to the 
gcave. For nearly two years premonitions of declining health 
had saddened our hearts, but no warning could prepare us for 
the shock of his death. When the tidings flashed along the 
wires that Lee too had crossed over the river, and was resting 
with Jackson under the shade of the trees, there went up from 
earth the wailing voice of millions, who mourned the loss of fa- 
ther, friend, esamplar, guide. But, upon the ear of Christian 
faith, there broke another strain, the jubilant anthem of ever- 
lasting peace, in sounding welcome from choral seraphim: 
" Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord . . . they rest 
from their labors, and their works do follow them," 



THE END. 



APPLETONS' 

AMERICAN CYCLOPAEDIA 

NJSJF ME VISED EDITION. 

Entirely rewritten by the ablest writers on every subject. Printed from new tj-pe, 
and illustrated with Several Thousand Engravings and Maps. 



The work originally published under the title of The New American Cyclopedia 
was completed in 1863, since which time the wide circulation which it has attained in all 
parts of the United States, and the signal developments which have taken place in every 
branch of science, literature, and art, have induced the editors and publishers to submit 
it to an exact and thorough revision, and to issue a new edition entitled The American 
Cyclopedia. 

Within the last ten years the progress of discovery in every department of knowl- 
edge has made a new work of reference an imperative want. 

The movement of political affairs has kept pace with the discoveries of science, and 
their fruitful application to the industrial and useful arts and the convenience and re- 
finement of social life. Great wars and consequent revolutions have occurred, involving 
national changes of pecuhar moment. The civil war of own country, which was at its 
height when the last volume of the old work appeared, has happily been ended, and a 
new course of commercial and industrial activity has been commenced. 

Large accessions to our geographical knowledge have been made by the indefatigable 
explorers of Africa. 

The great political revolutions of the last decade, with the natural result of the lapse 
of time, have brought into public view a multitude of new men, whose names are in 
every one's mouth, and of whose lives every one is curious to know the particulars. 
Great battles have been fought and important sieges maintained, of which the details 
are as yet preserved only in the newspapers or in the transient publications of the day, 
but which ought now to take their place in permanent and authentic history. 

In preparing the present edition for the press, it has accordingly been the aim of the 
editors to bring down the information to the latest possible dates, and to furnish an ac- 
curate account of the most recent discoveries in science, of every fresh production in 
literature, and of the newest inventions in the practical arts, as well as to give a succinct 
and original record of the progress of political and historical events. 

The work has been begun after long and careful preliminary labor, and with the 
most ample resources for carrying it on to a successful termination. 

None of the original stereotype plates have been used, but every page has been 
printed on new type, forming in fact a new Cyclopaedia, with the same plan and com- 
pass as its predecessor, but with a far greater pecuniary expenditure, and with such im- 
provements in its composition as have been suggested by longer experience and enlarged 
knowledge. 

The illustrations, which are introduced for the first time in the present edition, have 
been added not for the sake of pictorial effect, but to give greater lucidity and force to the 
explanations in the text. They embrace all branches of science and of natural history, 
and depict the most famous and remarkable features of scenery, architecture, and art, 
as well as the various processes of mechanics and manufactures. Although intended 
for instruction rather than embellishment, no pains have been spared to insure their 
artistic excellence ; the cost of their execution is enormous, and it is believed they will 
find a welcome reception as an admirable feature of the Cyclopaedia, and worthy of its 
high character. 

This work is sold to subscribers only, payable on delivery of each volume. It will 
be completed in sixteen large octavo volumes, each containing about 800 pages, fully 
illustrated with several thousand Wood Engravings, and with numerous colored Litho- 
graphic Maps. 

Price and Style of Binding. 

In extra Cloth, per vol. . . . $5.00 \ In half rtissia, extra gilt, per vol. 8.0O 
In library leather, per vol, . . 6.00 In full mor. ant. gt. edges, per vol. 10.00 
Inhalf turkey morocco, per vol. . 7 .00 \ In full russla per vol 10. OO 

Eight volumes now ready. Succeeding volumes, until completion, will be issued 
once in two months. 

*,* Specimen pages of the AMERICAN Cyclopedia, showing type, illustrations, 
etc., will be sent gratis, on application. 

FIRST-CLASS CANVASSING AGENTS WANTED. 
Address the PubUshers, 1). APPLETON & CO., 549 & 551 Broad^^ay, N. Y. 



GEUERAL JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON'S CAMPAIGNS. 



The undersigned have the pleasure of announcing that they have now ready, 

GENERAL JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON'S 

NARRATIVE OF IILITARY OPERATIONS. 

Directed by him during the Late War between the States, 

This work is the first authentic contribution, from a Southern military source, of 
material for the future historian, and is written in the terse, incisive, and vivid style, for 
which its eminent author is so justly renowned. 

The correspondence between General Johnston and the late Confederate Government 
lifts the curtain on much that perplexed the understanding of people North and South 
during the progress of the struggle. 



Letter from, O-eneraZ SKenncm. 

DQUARTEES AEMT OP THE UNIT 

Washington, D. C, October 31, 1873, 



Headquartees Aemt or the United States, \ 



AtESSKH. D. Appleton & Co., 

549 Broadway, New York. 

Dear Sirs: I have yonr favor of the 30th, repeating what you said to me in person yesterday, 
that you have for publication the manuscript of General Johnston's " Narrative of the Military 
Operations directed by him during the Late War between the States." 

Without the least hesitation I advise its immediate publication, for I believe it will have a most 
extensive sale at the North, as well as the South, and even in Europe. 

General Johnston is most favorably known to the military world, and is regarded by many as the 
most ekillfal general on the Soaihem side. He is also ready with his pen, and whatever he records 
will receive the closest attention by students of the art of war on this continent, and will enter 
largely into the future Military History of the Civil War. 

With great respect, your obedient servant, 

W. T. Sherman, General. 



The book is printed on good paper, in clear, large type, and illustrated with maps, 
portraits, etc., etc., the whole making a volume of over 600 pages, and 

SOLD ONLY BY SUBSCRIPTION. 



Prioe, in elegant Cloth Binding, $B.OO ; Leather, $6.00; Half Turkey 

Morocco, $7.80. 

D. SPPl<5}¥0]Nf ^ do., PtilDH^ef^, 

54:9 & 551 Broadway, Netv Tork, 



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